The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In a series of lectures, I tried to explain the extent to which the present should strive for a division of the social organism into an area of the spirit with independent administration, an area of law on a democratic basis, and an independent economic area. The idea and practical formulation of this view of the threefold social organism, when it attempted to place itself in today's cultural and intellectual life, was expressed to those people who could be expected to have learned something for their work in relation to human development from the loud and clear facts of the last four to five years and also from our present. And one should actually believe that in the present time everyone living with a truly awakened soul should learn from these facts that speak loudly and clearly about the reorganization of social matters. Naturally, the idea could not actually arise in the mind of the bearer of this threefold thinking that those who, by virtue of their entire mental makeup – mentality is what one has been accustomed to calling it in recent times – want to hold on to old programs, to old party opinions, will readily profess their support for this idea of the threefold order of the social organism. For what must one actually have within oneself in order to grasp this idea as one that has really been plucked out of the life of the present in a practical way?

You have to be able to say: the terrible events of the world war catastrophe have shown how the old views on economic life have driven this economic life of humanity into external institutions, which, in the end, by combining the individual institutions into the great state imperialisms, had to lead to the world catastrophe. They were driven to this because economic life developed in a certain sense in such a way that it was, I might say, left to its own driving forces; that we neglected to arrive at truly comprehensive economic ideas which could have lived through themselves through economic measures. A man who is officially responsible for the reorganization of economic life in the Reich Ministry, Wichard von Moellendorff, recently stated that it was his conviction that, under all circumstances, even if the world war catastrophe had not occurred, or had not occurred in the form in which it did, economic life would inevitably have driven itself into a crisis of the most terrible kind, to the detriment of humanity and of nations, for the simple reason that this economic life lacked truly fruitful guiding ideas. And the forces that operated in the states and in the legal conceptions of nations were closely allied with this economic life. In the final analysis it had come about that only economic interests were reflected in the legal systems of the nations. And we had to experience that in 1914 the mutual relations between the states ran into such unclear currents that basically no state power, even with the most earnest goodwill, was actually in a position to avert the terrible threat at that time.

So it might seem that for economic life as for state life, there is much to be learned from the course of events that led to the impossibility of their own destruction for the inner drive that says: A new idea, a new willpower must be found if humanity is to flourish in its development; a new idea for economic life, a new idea for political or legal life. And is not, after all, the whole of political and legal life and of economic life based on the spiritual powers that humanity can unfold, that humanity can cultivate in the growing generation, and which can then intervene in the economy and in the legal life as rational thoughts? Can we not also say that intellectual life also shows how we have arrived at a critical epoch, and how we can learn from it, that we must reflect on and contemplate its further fruitful development and on a new foundation for it?

In the three most important areas of human life – economic, political and legal, and spiritual life – the big question arose, the question of the world war catastrophe and its aftermath. People should actually be around who have learned from the course of events. The fact that humanity's new phase of development cannot be mastered with old thoughts and old party opinions should actually be a basic conviction of the modern human being, based on the world of facts itself. It is out of this attitude, out of this conviction, that the lectures have been given so far here by me. In today's lecture and the one the day after tomorrow, I would like to add a few things to what has already been said, which could serve as a supplement to what has been said so far, from a more spiritual point of view today and from a more practical point of view the day after tomorrow. One thing has emerged that is, in essence, extremely instructive in view of the conviction and attitude just expressed.

What I would characterize as a strange alliance has emerged, a kind of coalition from the far right to the far left. In terms of their opposition to what has been presented here as the basic ideas of the tripartite social organism, Spartacists, independents, majority socialists, the Civic Party and extreme reactionaries are marching in complete agreement with each other today. It could hardly have seemed better, as it could have, to let the Spartacists and the bourgeois and the reactionaries converge in their attitudes.

This peculiarity therefore exists, that basically, at least in form and in attitude, the most amicable harmony reigns from left to right. From the extreme left, we could hear the following judgment about what has been said in these lectures very recently. We could hear that people agree, completely agree, with my criticism of the previous economic order, that they also completely agree with the threefold social order, that they even believe that this threefold order must come about, but – now comes the other thing: they will summon up all their strength to fight tooth and nail against what has been said here in criticism of the previous economic system and about the threefold social organism.

Strange things – one declares one's full agreement with the matter and at the same time declares that one must fight the matter at all costs! Similar arguments can also be heard from the extreme right. So there could perhaps have been no better opportunity for those who, whether from this or that hole of old views, wanted to come together to fight against that which absolutely does not and will not compromise with old views.

Today, by way of introduction to what I will have to say in detail the day after tomorrow, I would like to draw attention to a side of the modern social movement that has actually always been misunderstood, and which has been taken into account precisely in the formulation, in the conception of the idea and the practice of the tripartite organism. Today, I would like to touch on the spiritual basis of the current development of humanity, because I have to be aware that this spiritual basis is of the utmost importance and that the misunderstandings that arise with regard to what can and should be socially desired today stem precisely from the failure to take this spiritual basis into account.

And there is another reason why it is necessary, urgently necessary, to place a movement that today merely wants to be economic or, at most, political, on a spiritual foundation. For anyone who follows today's events as they unfold, not only on the surface, but who tries to penetrate deeper into what is actually happening in the depths of the development of nations today, must surely say to himself: the mighty, the terrible terrible, blood-drenched battle that has taken place is only a wave that has arisen from something in the depths of human nature, something that has been building for a long time. It is an inner restlessness in human nature that is showing itself almost everywhere in the world. One could feel it all these years since the outbreak of this world catastrophe by the facts, as more and more populations across the continents joined in what was actually taking place, joined in such a way that sometimes one truly did not know why, or that the reasons they put forward for joining made a very dubious impression. One could see from this that something elementary lies in this world catastrophe, something that is emerging from the depths of human existence over the whole earth. And it seems to me that nowhere is there more opportunity for a real recognition of what is actually taking place in the depths of humanity than in Central Europe, which has recently found itself squeezed between the whole of the Orient and the whole of the Occident.

This prompts us to ask: What is actually at the root of this? And it should be understandable that the understanding of such things must be based on a certain inner contemplation of the circumstances, on a certain experiential grasping of the facts, that something like instinctive, intuitive contemplation is needed to understand these things. Therefore, one should be understood when one draws attention to what arises from such a view, so that one encounters, I would like to say, what is happening to people. It will not be too much to say today that what has developed out of the world war catastrophe in terms of moods through Central Europe towards the East, towards Russia, towards Asia, and what is developing in terms of moods towards the West and across to America, if one understands that one sees in it only the continuation of that elementary restlessness of humanity that first found its horrific expression in the world war catastrophe. That was, as many have said, the most terrible external armed conflict that has taken place since the time when people have been talking about history. And this armed conflict has been waged with the most physical means by a large part of contemporary humanity. But we can see emerging, rising out of what has produced this armed conflict, something that will take hold of humanity with equal significance and equal impact, and we are actually only at the beginning of it. If what we have experienced was the most terrible armed conflict, then we will also experience - all the signs, which are present in the moods of the people, show it - the greatest spiritual battle, the greatest, the most terrible spiritual confrontation between the East, the Orient and the Occident. We are at the beginning of great and comprehensive spiritual struggles for humanity. And what is now taking place in social demands seems only to be the wave of a spiritual struggle of humanity that has been driven to the surface. Even those contemporaries who have already reached a respectable age will have to engage themselves in this spiritual struggle of humanity. In particular, however, the younger generations will have to engage themselves in this spiritual struggle that encompasses humanity. And what we can say to these growing generations about what we learn from the events, much, very much, will depend on the shaping of human development in the future. Today, the coming event is first announced by something that is outwardly connected with things: half of India, more than half of India, is half starved, and from starved India, the call goes up from a thousand and a thousand souls today: “Away from England!” This must not be judged merely from the political point of view that one is accustomed to from elsewhere today; it must be judged from a broader, more incisive point of view, one that is effective in the development of humanity. For what lives in the Orient is imbued with the heritage, with the heirloom of ancient spiritual life, which has only declined.

Expressed through the deeds of men, the heritage of ancient Oriental spiritual life will come into conflict with the spiritual aspirations of the Occident as far as America, and it remains to be seen whether those forces in the Anglo-American population that their tenacity and generous comprehension of their own selfish national interests have dealt with Central Europe in the well-known way, whether they will also be able to cope with Asia when, driven by the hunger of India, quite different forces will speak than those which the West has heard so far? This is only a hint of what is alive in the cultural atmosphere of the earth today. Because this is alive within, it is not enough today to judge what is actually happening from the traditional political and economic concepts. Therefore, it is necessary to extract the impulses for a new development of human conditions from a spiritual understanding of what is taking place in human moods across the whole earth today. Today, we must not only look at how the proletariat of Russia or Central Europe or the Entente is faring, although these are of course the most pressing questions for us.

Today, we must not just look at how certain people want to sit on their money bags. Today, if we do not want to miss the most important event, we must see as essentially involved in the social forces of the present that which the still half-asleep Orient will pour over the world. It is not necessary to say more than a few words, but when these few words are taken with all the weight that they carry for the spiritual development of mankind, then in these few words one will hear something that has a say in the reshaping of human development. The Orient, in so far as it is the cultured Orient – if we may apply this Occidental expression to the Orient – the Orient lived through thousands of years and, basically, to this day, yes, today, especially in its most spiritually minded representatives in the view that reality, true only that which man can experience spiritually and soulfully within himself, that which rises within the human being as inner soul content, that which can fill the human being so that he draws his true human consciousness from this inner soul content. This is true reality for the Orient, as far as it is the educated Orient. And the external, physical-sensual world, the world in which we work, the world in which the land for our work lies, in which we place the means of production for our work, this world is for the Oriental the Maja, the great appearance, that which is not real, which lives like a minor planet of the true spiritual-soul reality that arises only within. The Oriental is one with this view. He lives with it in his social community. This view fills him at all times, whether he withdraws in solitude for contemplation or whether he lends a hand in the oriental way to his fellow human beings in the physical world. One must consider such things if one really wants to see the world that presents itself to us in people living east of us, because basically, in Russia, it is already beginning to be as I have just characterized it. It only reaches its culmination, its peak, when one looks further east. On the other side, we see a completely different human disposition, a completely different inner life, when we cross the Rhine to the west, when we look in particular at the Anglo-American world. But on the other hand, everything that actually characterizes the attitude and the state of mind of the Western world is increasingly being shared by the basic character of Central European people, and there it reaches its peak in the attitude and state of mind of the present-day socialists, of socialists of all colors, basically.

We can find it again and again when we look at the people of the West and now also the people of Central Europe, as we have just looked at the people of the Orient. We will recognize what underlies the West when we grasp it in the way in which it has come to expression most clearly and most radically, when we grasp it precisely in the modern socialist mentality. What now prevails, no longer as a theoretical view but as a fundamental mood of the soul, is that the only reality is that which surrounds us in the physical, sensual world, that which we grasp when we do our work in the physical world for our fellow human beings. What is expressed in the land on which our work is done, what is expressed in the means of production with which our work is done, that is the only reality, and what appears in human souls as right, as custom, as art, as science, in short, as spiritual life, is only a result, a smoke, so to speak, of this single sensual-physical reality; this is, as every socialist thinker of the present day is firmly convinced, ideology. Ideology is the same thing seen from within, just as the Maya is for the Oriental. The Oriental says: physical sensuality, the physical world around us, the economic world, material existence, is Maya, it is an ideology, and reality is solely that which arises within the soul. And the Westerner says: Reality is only that which surrounds us externally, what is in the economic life, and an ideology, a maja, is what arises inwardly in the soul. If we know how such a basic mood of the soul actually makes a person, how it places him in life, then we see in what is happening today as a mood within the human race on earth this great, powerful contrast that I have just described. And this contrast has an enormous historical impact. From this contrast, not only a struggle between nations will develop, not only a race war, but a struggle of humanity, in which we and those who follow us will be placed. He who can see in the present mood of humanity the preparations for this struggle of humanity will not fail to be able to let himself be fertilized by what is really going on in present-day humanity in terms of the ideas and forces necessary for a social world view. What can be grasped in the present, I would like to say, as two abstract thoughts, but what will become reality, will grow out of fighting forces, although of a different form than the physical fighting forces of armed combat were, but to fighting forces that challenge the inner strength, the inner resistance of man to an even greater extent than the past armed combat did.

And further: a remarkable parallelism arises when one follows the moods that have just been indicated to you with more or less abstract but very real thoughts. We look towards the Orient and rightly ask ourselves today: What has become of the mood that created the greatest spiritual wealth in the ancient world of the Orient? Those in the know are aware of this. What has become of all this for today's cultural humanity of the Orient? The man of the Orient is weighed down in mystical-dark rapture, in half-sleepiness. That which used to give strength to the Oriental under the influence of the thought “sensuality is Maya, inner soul is reality, divine reality” used to give the Oriental strength and power, today it gives him weakness, it makes him a fatalist, someone who surrenders without will to the fate of the world. This is the fruit of a spiritual life that was directed specifically at the human, spiritual and soul. If one paints the corresponding counter-image of the Occident, then one says something highly, highly uncomfortable for very many people today – I am well aware of this – something that strongly provokes their antagonism. But I have often said: We are not living in the time of the small, but in the time of the great reckoning, and one must not shy away from telling people the truth.

We have seen how, in a certain higher development, what has been prepared for centuries in the West has found a particularly characteristic expression in modern socialism. Through Western development, the human mood has gradually emerged that actually sees the only reality in the physical-sensual world of economic life. And the leading and governing circles, that is, those who were there before, were the first to feel that the physical-sensual world and its material economic factors are the only reality, that the other things that arise in the soul are Maya, ideology. Socialism merely articulated what others also felt but did not dare to express. Under socialism, it has only emerged that the whole world of law, of custom, of art, of science, all that is called the spiritual life of man, is an ideology, a maja, for the newer humanity of the West. How did this basically genuinely Western view come to this climax? It has come about because more and more has emerged within modern economic life that which is referred to as modern private capitalism. This modern private capitalism has created the mood in economic life that has ultimately transformed our entire social system into a kind of acquisition society. Bit by bit, we have seen it come about over the last few centuries, how the current economic conditions have arisen from earlier ones. Even if people today do not pay attention to it, in earlier centuries there was a much greater interest in the objects and products of the environment, in everything that was part of the law and the economy, than there is today.

There was a much deeper factual interest than there is today. Owning this or that object because it has this or that form, because it has this or that origin, because it bears this or that signature, that was a human interest in earlier times to a much greater degree than it is today, where this objective human interest in external arrangements is often clouded and obscured by the fact that people arrange their home according to what they acquire purely for the sake of money and capital in the competitive struggle for survival. Torn away from the admiration for the beauty of what people create, torn away from the value of something simply because it was made by a human being, the interest of a large number of people today is in being able to see from their annual balance sheet whether they are in an active balance with their surroundings. That is a somewhat radical way of putting it, but it is the economic signature of the present. And this economic signature has given rise to another with regard to the concept of human labor. If we look back just a short time, we find how people, so to speak, allowed their work to grow together with their products. You can feel this when you are in a museum, standing in front of old door handles, old locks, even old boots. You can tell from the objects how the work of man has flowed into them. Today, the work of man is separate from the product; that is why most of the products that people delight in are so ugly. Today, human labor is something that has market value only in that it is rewarded with a certain payment. Today, human labor is what is calculated primarily according to its market value. And so, with regard to the administration of goods, the capitalist competition for the administration of goods, and with regard to his relationship to his work, man has become detached from the world. He stands, as it were, beside the machine, stuck in the soul-deserting capitalism of modern times, without connection to the external reality that he sees around him, which he cannot deny, and which has even become the only reality for him. And he cannot believe that what arises within him, the spiritual and soul-like, torn away from nature and economic order, is anything other than a Maja, an ideology. This is what the modern economic order has done.

The modern proletariat has grown into this modern economic order, has been pushed into it, especially over the last three to four centuries, gradually pushed in to the extent that it is in it today. This detachment from external reality has reached a climax in the development of humanity in modern times. One could demonstrate this in detail, how man has gradually, I might say, been alienated from himself. You see, today one can speak with countless members of the proletariat – if one has learned to think and feel with the proletariat, then one hears from their mouths also that which moves them above all – but then one hears you often hear: Above all, it must not be the case that we work all day and work with our hands and that our souls remain empty, because we come home tired in the evening and can do nothing but fall down and lie down. We want a reasonable working hours. And from what has been done with the working hours of people in recent centuries, which has now improved, the demand for an eight-hour working day emerges: 6 X 8 is 48, the 48-hour week. This is something that people who work want to achieve today. People talk about it: yes, of course, something like that is being striven for, humanity must move forward, but in the old days people had it even worse. In the old days, people had to work even harder, they were even more like beasts of burden. – I can share with you a decree from King Ferdinand I of Austria from the year 1550. In this decree it says: Every worker shall – and I ask you to pay particular attention to the following words – every worker shall work as has been the custom for many years, mornings and afternoons, with the exception of Sunday and Saturday afternoons, half a shift, that is, four hours. That makes 1550 hours for the year: 5 mornings of 8 hours (a half-shift in the morning and a half-shift in the afternoon, each of 4 hours) and 1 half-shift on Saturday of 4 hours, which adds up to 44 hours in the week for the year 1550. And of these 44 hours in the week, it is said: each laborer should work “as has been the custom for ages.” It is pointed out that this is the old custom. The modern age has not only brought us what is so celebrated from the progress of humanity; the modern age has also brought us the fact that we have to reclaim what already existed. These things should, I think, make us think! And under the influence of such things, especially the influence of the endeavor to extract as much as possible from work, this clinging of the Western man to physical sensual reality as the only reality has arisen. From this arose the feeling that the spiritual and soul is Maya, is ideology. But this has also brought about the modern proletariat's being placed in mere economic life. And so the great error of the modern proletariat has arisen. This modern proletariat was harnessed into economic life by the leading and guiding circles. They had to say to themselves: In this economic life, the soul is desolate, in this economic life, spirit is only smoke and sound, maya. We must have a different economic life. We must reshape economic life. From the reshaped economic life will emerge a spiritual life that is not a class spiritual life, but a universal human spiritual life.

It is not surprising that the modern proletariat has fallen prey to this error, because it was completely pushed into economic life. What it had was only born out of economic life. For the proletariat, the other world was a Maja, an ideology. As a proletariat, it could believe nothing other than that the only economic life it knew was merely to be transformed. Then everything else would fall into place by itself. Instead of – and this could not be the case at first, it could only arise from the lessons of the bloody world war – instead of saying to themselves, it is our situation that is to blame for the fact that we have only and solely entered into economic life, that this economic life has made the spiritual life dependent on itself, so in the future the spiritual life must no longer be dependent on the economic life, it must be freely based on itself - instead of drawing these radical conclusions, the proletariat drew the other: a different economic life will certainly arise, that will certainly produce a different spiritual life.

Today we are facing a great turning-point: either the proletariat will bring about its own misfortune if it remains only in the economic sphere and wants to transform only that, or it must realize what other people must realize with it , namely that spiritual life, as it is projected by the threefold social organism, must be taken out of the state and economic life, so that it is detached from them and placed on its own feet, in its own self-government.

And what has become of it? Through these influences, which I have just characterized, what has become of this Occidental belief that the spiritual-mental is Maya, the ideology, and that the outer economic life is the only reality? This has become what then found its ingenious expression in Marxism, because ingeniousness is also characterized by the fact that it produces not only the greatest positive achievements of humanity, but also the greatest errors. The view has become: Since you can't conjure into reality with the mind, with the thought, with what you ideologically develop – because only spiritualists believe that you just need to have a thought and then machines will move – since you can't work with thoughts, can't produce physical products, you can't control economic life with thoughts either. Therefore, economic life moves forward by itself alone. And if that is the only reality, then it must produce by itself what is to be achieved for humanity. Hence the Marxist doctrine – even if it is not stated by Marx, because Marx was not a “Marxist”, as he himself said, in the sense of many of his followers – hence the doctrine that at most can be promoted by man, what is brought about by the production process, by the economic-material process, by the external institutions themselves, but that all real progress actually takes place independently of man through the economic forces and factors themselves. This has developed into Western fatalism, into the belief that external reality will take care of itself without humans. The capitalists, for example, will concentrate the means of production more and more; the concentration of the means of production is taking place, and when these are sufficiently concentrated, they will automatically enter into the new socialization. The expropriation of the expropriators will take place. Fatalistic belief, combating as utopian all that is aware and convinced that man is the one who makes history, that what is to become action must first live in human thought – the drowsiness of the Oriental from his ancient spiritual life goes parallel to the fatalism of the Western majority in the belief that economic conditions will do it, one has only to wait and see how the development takes place. Is it not the case that we are clearly at a major turning point in human development? Fatalism in the East – fatalism among the most advanced people in the West. Fatalism here, fatalism there. A new force must flourish from what is in decline on both sides. How can we muster faith in the further development of humanity if we are unable to believe that something can arise from this mutual fatalism that will bring new impulses and new developmental forces for humanity? It is out of this faith that the ideas for the threefold social organism arose. Out of this belief, out of this belief in progress and in the development of humanity, arose the consideration of the world from two points of view: How does one engage with modern institutions, especially in economic life? How does one engage with modern spiritual life, so that it does not remain an appendage of economic and state life, but so that it becomes a free impulse in the development of humanity?

I believed that in the early 1890s the world would understand from the events of the time the impulse to point to the depths of human nature, from which a new, liberated spiritual life can gradually develop. And I tried to express this belief in my Philosophy of Freedom, which was first published in 1894. I did not reprint this Philosophy of Freedom even though it had long been out of print, because I could see that the ideas contained in it were not met with understanding, at least not during the decades immediately preceding the world war catastrophe. In particular, there was no response in Central Europe, where people were always saying, “We need the sun,” but they did not want to include the longing for a spiritual sun in this saying. And it was only when the belief arose that people could gain a new understanding of spiritual freedom from the lessons of the terrible world war catastrophe that I was impelled to produce the new edition of my “Philosophy of Freedom” that is now available. For in what has been expressed, again and again, from subconscious, not conscious, depths of human nature in modern times, which is particularly expressed in the things that the modern proletariat now feels, although it cannot yet consciously express them because it has been deprived of education to do so, there is a threefold. There is the dark feeling that the external institutions of legal and economic life have taken on a form in which I, as a human being, am so constrained that I am merely inhibited, and that there is basically no point in of free will in the modern competitive market, where everyone must either acquire capitalistically or by wage labor, where all connection is dead between what man must do, that is, what he works, and what is then the product. There is no sense of connection: I am connected to the world in such a way that my will is free. One felt an inhibition of the will. And then, when one looked at one's relationship to other people: to a climax seems to have come under modern capitalist competition, under the forced labor of the newer times in the wage relationship, to a climax seems to have come what one can call a dwindling of trust from person to person. In the most extreme sense, anti-social instincts have taken the place of the old social instincts, which at least still existed in some form. These anti-social instincts have finally led to a lack of understanding between the modern classes of humanity, and have created the abyss between the proletariat and the non-proletariat, which is so difficult to bridge in modern times. This has given rise to the second experience of the inner man in modern times, the oppression with regard to the sense of right and wrong. And to this was added a third, which I already hinted at at the beginning of my discussion today: People saw each other exchanging their economic goods, they saw what lived in the exchange of these economic goods being entered on the left and right side of the books. But, as even Mr. von Moellendorff had to admit, no thought was given to the institutions of economic life. The third experience of the soul: It was as if one were plunged into darkness when looking into the maelstrom of modern markets, where the real thing for people was only what was acquired in a capitalist way. These have been the three experiences in modern times: the inhibition of free will, because there was nothing in which one could develop free will; complete oppression of the sense of right and obscuration of thought with regard to the external institutions of legal and economic life.

That was the feeling that gave rise to the impulse – it may have been weak and clumsy, it may still be weak and clumsy today, I readily admit – that gave rise to the impulse to seek the essence of the free human being, the human being who feels so integrated into the human order that he can say to himself: I lead a dignified human existence. The impulse to seek the essence of this free human being, the essence of the free spiritual human being, in the sense that all people can be such free spiritual human beings within the institutions of modern legal and economic life. One thing emerged above all others. People ask so easily and have asked again and again for centuries, and philosophers have speculated about it and countless opinions have been formed about it: Is man free according to his will, or is he not free? Is he a mere creature of nature who can only act out of the mechanical impulses of his inner being? The question has always been approached wrongly because more and more in the West the feeling for the actual reality of spiritual life has faded. For the Orient, the question of freedom or unfreedom has almost no significance; it plays no role at all there. In the West, it became the fundamental question of world view and ultimately even of political life, yes, of criminal law and so on. And one thing was not realized – you can read in detail about the individual steps that lead to this train of thought and this realization in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” – one thing was not realized, namely that the question “Is man free or is he not free?” actually makes no sense at all, that it must be put differently, that it must be put like this: Is man, from his birth onward, through an education appropriate to his nature, to be developed in accordance with education and schooling in such a way that, despite external legal and economic institutions, something can arise within him as an experience that makes him a free being? Yes, that not only makes him a free being inwardly, but that develops the power of freedom in him to such a strength that he can then also set up the external legal and economic life in his own way? This arose as a basic impulse in modern developing humanity, on the one hand the democratic urge for equal rights for all, on the other hand the social urge: I will help you as you should help me. But one felt: such a social order with “equal rights for all” and with “help me as I want and must help you,” such a social order can only be established by people who, as free people, as free spiritual people, develop a true relationship to the whole of reality.

One must first understand that man is born neither free nor unfree, but that he can be educated and developed towards freedom, towards an understanding of freedom, towards experiencing freedom, if one brings him into contact with that spiritual life that imbues him with forces that first set him free in his development as a human being; that one can develop up to the point where our thoughts are no longer abstract, unreal, ideological, but thoughts that are grasped by the will. This is what I tried to present to the world as a realization in my Philosophy of Freedom: the marriage of the will with thoughts that have become inwardly free. And from this marriage of the will with the inwardly freed thoughts, it is to be hoped that the human being emerges who also develops the abilities, in living together with others, that is, in a social community, each for himself and each socially with each other, to produce such legal and economic orders that one accepts as necessary, just as one accepts the necessity of having to carry one's physical body, of obeying its laws, and not being free to grow one's right hand on the left side and vice versa, or one's head in the middle of one's chest. We do not fight against what is naturally reasonable out of our freedom. We fight against what is inhuman and unnatural about human legal and economic institutions with our freedom when we have come to the appropriate awareness, because we know that it can be done differently. And we know and want to know, as modern people, that every human being should work democratically on this transformation of the external economic and legal order to such a rationality that it does not impair our freedom any more than it impairs the natural lawfulness of our physical body. To understand this, however, one must have a heart and mind for the reality of spiritual life, because the kind of spiritual life that is an appendage of state and economic life, the kind of spiritual life that one acquires only if one is the son of rich people or has received state scholarships, or for the sake of acquiring a state position, this kind of spiritual life does not make one free. A spiritual life that stands on its own, that works out of its own strength, that is free, and that produces, in contrast to those moods, those three moods: inhibition of the will, oppression of the sense of right, obscuration of thoughts, which are present when the will is unfree, the other mood: the free development of the will in spiritual life.

If what I have described here in a series of lectures comes about as a free spiritual life, a spiritual life with self-administration of the pedagogical-didactic in the threefolded social organism, then the human being will no longer feel his will inhibited, but will be surrounded by an atmosphere generated from this free spiritual life, so that he will say to himself, this free spiritual life also accepts my will as a free one. And from the understanding of the self-governing spiritual life will emerge what the new social impulses are, which consist in the mutual, true, objective tolerance and understanding of one person by another in the field of the second link of the social organism, the constitutional state, where every person, provided they are mature, faces every other person as an equal. And thirdly, as we shall see in more detail the day after tomorrow, there will emerge a structure of economic life such that those who work in this economic life, from the highest intellectual worker to the last manual laborer, will participate socially as independent, free human individuals, so that the time when people were plunged into darkness at the thought of economic life will be replaced by the time when the reasonable action of works councils, the economy will be regulated by the rational activity of workers' councils, transport councils and economic councils, where the individual human being will no longer be at the mercy of the hazards of supply and demand and the crisis-prone nature of the capital economy, but where the individual human being will stand in life as an economic agent alongside other human beings; where fair distribution of prices and work will arise out of reason, so that we can place ourselves as free human beings in that which is once necessary in economic life. And just as we place ourselves in the body in its natural necessity, so man will achieve his freedom in modern democratic socialism, in modern social democracy.

To achieve this true humanity, it is necessary to overcome the old party patterns, the old party opinions, which, in the face of today's human demands, are nothing but mummies of thought and judgment. Truly, those who constantly speak of the fact that I want to use what underlies the threefold social organism to promote myself, know me badly. Oh, I would much rather have remained in quiet Dornach, where I worked before coming here, on a work that is very close to my heart, and I stand here only against my subjective will, out of the realization that today, in the face of the old party programs and party thoughts, which are mummies and which gather in the holiest unity from the extreme right to the extreme left, that it is a duty to work against these mummies as far as I can. I admit that it may be weak, then it may be fought factually and something better may be put in its place, but as a duty one must feel it towards the old and towards the new facts, to put a new thing before humanity. It does not seem to me at all as if humanity would not long for this new thing, as if humanity would not actually want this new thing to appear. For what is the real aim of this idea, this practice of the threefold social organism? They want people to finally understand that we are living in a time of great reckoning, in which the three main areas of human life, spiritual life, political or legal life, and economic life, have been set in motion and have become restless, and that we need a reorganization, a transformation of these three areas of our general human life.

So what does the idea of the threefold social organism want? Perhaps with weak, insufficient, or defective forces, then one may improve them objectively, may deal with them objectively. It wants a formulation of what is to become reality in order to bring about the necessary transformation of political life, economic life, and spiritual life.

Now, the Social Democratic Party Congress is meeting in Weimar, the party congress of the party that professes to want to transform modern life in the appropriate sense. And a minister, even the Reich Minister for Socialization, spoke the following words to the Social Democrats in Weimar: We need not only a political revolution, but also an economic and spiritual one. Whoever finds the formulation that also mobilizes the spiritual and moral forces in the people will bind them to his banners. The League for the Threefold Social Organism may still be insufficient, then it will be happy to make way for others who can do better, but the fact that at least the same direction must be taken as the League for the Threefold Social Organism is acting in, is admitted before its party members even by the present Reich Minister for Socialization, Wissell. And from his words: We need not only a political, but also an economic and spiritual revolution —, one may well hear that we at least, even if we cannot do it in a sufficient sense, at least we want what these people must also want when they are clear about the demands of the present in a spiritually clear moment. But then, if that is the case, it must not happen, as I very much fear it will, that people of Mr. Wissell's ilk, when they get hold of the writings of the Federation for the Threefolding of the Social Organism, do as other party members do: they say, “Well, we agree completely, but we will fight it tooth and nail.” We would agree if someone came along who did it better so that we could step down. But that is not the point. The point is not to fight things that you yourself have to describe as necessary, but if you want to do something about them, to do it better. And you can be sure that the appearance of this idea of the threefold social order is based on the attitude that arises, firstly, from the necessity of this threefold order in the present, and that arises from the realization that something must happen before it is too late. Therefore, she calls out to all those who want to fight this threefold order of the social organism: All right, we'll step down, but you do better if you yourselves have to admit that the threefold order of the social organism is a necessity!

Closing remarks.

No one wishes to join the discussion. Dr. Unger therefore asks Dr. Steiner to say a few final words.

Dr. Steiner: Dear attendees! I would just like to point out that despite some resistance, which has come precisely from party circles, it is nevertheless a success that some impulses in the field of economic life have already come from the Federation for the Threefold Social Order, and that, after all, some things have already happened in the direction of taking economic life into hand, of taking economic institutions into hand on the part of the people involved in this economic life. What form this should and must take will be discussed further the day after tomorrow. But the matter must not be taken in such a way that if one of the three limbs of the social organism shows a little that it is actually taking effect, then the others can sleep. If something is conceived as seriously as this threefold social order, then the one-sided success of one part of it is the greatest failure of the whole. Nothing endangers the threefold social order more than if only the advancement of one area, such as the economic, succeeds. Therefore, the present most serious concern of the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism is that a spiritual movement should join the economic movement, within which we stand as the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism, whether it is called a “cultural council” or a “spiritual council” or whatever, it is unimportant, that a large number of people should join, we have once distributed an appeal here “To All People,” because culture is actually a matter for all people —, an association of people, then, for whom the reorganization of our school and education system, in particular, is close to their hearts, so close to their hearts that they see how the free development of human physical and spiritual abilities is inhibited in the school system, which is clamped by the state. Therefore, the Federation for Threefolding fights for the liberation of the school system, for the self-administration of the school system from bottom to top. For this to happen in the right way, it is necessary that as many people as possible demand this self-administration of the entire educational system, indeed of the entire spiritual life, in public. To avoid the one-sided pursuit of economic forces from becoming a failure, it is the concern of the alliance to now bring together people who will work on this liberation of the school and spiritual life, the educational system. In doing so, there should be no dogmatism whatsoever. On the contrary, the more opinions are expressed and the more intelligent ideas are brought forward, the better. We shall not become inflexible in any self-made dogma, but shall be open to everything that may come from an informed mind. But anyone who believes that the new formations today also include those of intellectual life should actually feel the inclination, feel the necessity, to join others in such a union of people to form a kind of intellectual or cultural council, or whatever one wants to call it.

We have by no means failed to approach the positive as much as we can with our forces. There is a project here in Stuttgart that will probably be implemented as early as the fall: with the help of teachers who understand a truly humanistic concept of development conceived in the sense of a spiritualized anthropology, to bring about a truly comprehensive school that is not based on state omnipotence but on the development of the free human being. We hope that we will be able to bring such a school into existence here in Stuttgart for a small group – it should not be a “class school”, it will be a proletarian school – a school that, as far as it is already possible under today's conditions, will strictly reflect the views of the threefold social order in its pedagogy and didactics. The aim will be to develop the human being so that he grows into a truly free spiritual being. The aim will be to develop the forces that one has to develop in a human being between the ages of seven and fifteen in such a way that thinking, feeling and willing are cultivated to the full extent that they can be cultivated in these years of life, so that later life and its destiny cannot break these forces again. For anyone with sufficient psychological insight will notice how much of our present time, how much of the damage of our present time depends on the fact that thinking, feeling and willing are not developed with sufficient strength in the corresponding very young years of life, so that they cannot be broken later by the blows of fate in life. More than one might think, the undeveloped powers of the soul are crushed by our present-day cultural conditions; and more than one might think depends on these things in our circumstances, in relation to our decline.

I only want to point out this one example so that you can see that we are not visionaries, not ideologues, but that we want to work practically in all areas as far as our limited strength allows. But in order that such things may not remain isolated, and that by degrees our whole spiritual life may become free, it is necessary that many people with many opinions, many insights and knowledge and practices should join us in the cultural council or similar organization. This is what I did not clearly express in today's lecture, but it was the underlying desire that there should also be enough people in this spiritual link of the three-part social organism who, working together in this field, might achieve something of what is necessary in our time, which is not a small reckoning but a great one. For we do indeed need a transformation of conditions in the economic, political and spiritual spheres. If we cannot bring ourselves to work actively in this direction before it is too late, then it will have to be too late! And that would be the most terrible thing that could arise from this world war catastrophe. But if it leads many people to the realization that we must develop the strong will to reshape all three areas of life, then, even if not for the immediate present, then at least for the future of humanity, something great will come out of this will, and thus something great will come out of the disaster of the world war, even if it is not in the full sense. And we, as Germans, wedged between the Orient and the Occident, have this great task, to understand what is most in danger of falling asleep there and there and to awaken it from the center. And I believe that this is the best patriotism today, which will ultimately prevail against all that threatens us from the murky swamps of Versailles, in that what can prevail in the center between the East and the West will be that we will let arise from Germany's great time - from our Lessing , Herder, Schiller, Goethe, from the great period of our German philosophy, which summarizes German essence in its own way, the philosophy of Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, from the period of the German Romantics - that we allow to emerge, to shine forth, what our task is after the terrible experiences of the last years. This task is to awaken a spiritual life that is capable of shaping the material world reasonably and humanely and an economic life, a material life, that is capable of giving people the freedom to live a free spiritual life!

It is understandable that in these days of the most difficult and consequential decisions, one can only, dare I say it, speak with a certain deep sense of oppression. But at the same time, the idea arises in the human soul that what has been predetermined for the development of Central Europe for centuries, even millennia, must be achieved from completely different foundations, which lie in the depths and must ultimately be successful, even if the most significant and serious external material means are used to lead Central Europe economically to its end. These underlying factors have indeed been discussed in the whole series of lectures that I have had the honor of giving here, and which should also be discussed today in these difficult days. For only from these underlying factors can a light shine on the question that weighs so heavily on our hearts today: Can we still hope?

There are seemingly small, seemingly insignificant events in human life, but they leave a deep impression on the soul of anyone who feels they are immersed in this life with all their human powers as external symptoms of what is happening deep within the development of humanity. I had such an experience when I spoke in Basel a few months ago about the same subject that I have now repeatedly had the opportunity to speak to you about. At that time, in Basel, I spoke at the invitation of the Basel student body about what actually underlies the call for socialization of human institutions in the present day. And in the discussion, the strange word sounded out to me that no salvation could come from the external institutions that had become fragile and needed to be rebuilt before Lenin would be the ruler of the world!

Now, from these words one could indeed hear, on the one hand, humanity's call for socialization, and on the other hand, the most unsocial views about this socialization prevailing in wide circles. The person who had made this statement was obviously a supporter of the dogmas of today's popular communism, and I could only reply that it was highly significant for our time that people could talk about the socialization of humanity in such an unsocial way. For if one speaks out of the spirit of what is necessary for humanity today, one must at least recognize that the first step in socialization is the socialization of the conditions of domination, and that true socialization cannot begin with the oldest form of monarchism over the whole earth in the form of an economic papacy.

There is much, much to think about, that in our time, precisely those who believe that they are talking most intelligently about what should happen talk about it most incomprehensibly. To me, such an absurd assertion, as I heard at the time, was only, I might say, a distant call, uttered by a single person, to be thoroughly recognized by all who are reasonable and practical, as what must be done to meet the call for socialization that is sounding throughout the world today. For what must happen must happen very differently for the sake of those calling than these callers imagine, or actually do not imagine, but rather outwardly paint in front of their soul in dark phrases arising from their emotions.

Two things that shine out from the more recent development of humanity will have to be properly observed if one is to grasp what is currently striving to be realized. From the most diverse things that emerge here and there, in an understandable or misunderstood way, two demands of the present always emerge. These two demands are often expressed in a misleading way, but one must get to the bottom of them in their true form if one wants to be able to cope with what is striving for reality in our present time, which is putting humanity to such a difficult test. These two mottos of the latest time are, firstly, democracy and, secondly, socialism. Those who raise their voices more for a reorganization today out of general human sentiments clothe their call in the word democracy; those who think and feel more out of real life and its needs, in turn, clothe the call for a reorganization in the word socialism.

In this, one thing has been completely and strangely thrown out of the heraldry of public life in recent times. A party has drawn together the two impulses of recent times, democracy and socialism, in its name 'social democracy', and it has already left out in its name what I would like to prove today should be the basis for any real, serious and practical reconstruction of our society.

What has been left out of account in these two calls is the actual intellectual life, the intellectual life in the most comprehensive sense, in the sense in which it extends not only to what one absorbs in the way of higher concepts and ideas, in the way of all kinds of scientific and ideological questions, in the way of all kinds of artistic and religious, but in the sense in which it also extends to knowledge and insights with regard to both state and economic life, and in the sense in which it extends not only to theoretical but also to practical human capacities.

It can be said that in recent centuries, modern humanity has developed in such a way that, with regard to public life, it had a strong sense of trust in institutions that it wanted to make ever more democratic. And in these endeavors, based on the experience of modern economic conditions, demands have been made for a social organization of this economic life. Therefore, today one can have the feeling that, even if the confusing and chaotic conditions of the present cover up much of what is striving in the underground, the striving for a socialization of human institutions in a democratic sense, for a socially shaped democratic organization of our public life, is still present. But it is strange that trust in the forces of human spiritual life has been lost. People believe that democracy can help, people continue to believe that socialism can help, but they do not believe that there are forces in the spiritual life itself which, if they were grasped in the right way, could release from the human being what must be released from the human being for the good of the present and the near future.

If you take a little time to look around in today's world, where so many are pushing towards socialism, you will make a curious discovery. You might almost say that the call for socialization has grown stronger and stronger to the extent that human drives have become more and more anti-social, to the extent that human soul life has become more and more anti-social. And one might even say that man perceives from his own antisocial inner life how little he has been able to shape external institutions in a social sense, and because he is so antisocial within, he calls for a social shaping of external conditions. But anyone who knows human nature also knows that without a certain transformation of the human inner life, the social shaping of external institutions is an impossibility. The great error from which humanity has long since proceeded in its leading minds is — and I have already touched on this the day before yesterday — that man by nature has certain qualities that can be directly reckoned with in human society. Although one always believes in the opposite, but what I have just said is nevertheless the result of the experience of human life itself.

What I tried to draw attention to in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” at the beginning of the 1890s was that a human being can only come to their full existence if they really develop this full existence in their becoming between birth and death, when he develops, in particular, that which a soul must have if it strives for a dignified human existence — when he first releases the consciousness of his free human nature through the development of the powers inherent in his inner being. One can only become free and can only be free if one is educated, or educates oneself, in freedom. Anyone who sees through this will look at what is presented today as a call for socialism in a deeper way than is usually the case. He will ask, is it not perhaps the case that we do not find our way to social and democratic values as human beings because our educational life does not develop in the right way that which is in us that is predisposed to democracy and socialism? One needs very specific inner impulses of human nature if one is to place oneself in a democratic community or if one wants to establish a social economic community. And one could almost say, if one did not shock too many people of the present time with an admittedly true truth: just as a person is born - the development of the child shows it clearly - so he initially has neither the impulses for democracy nor for socialism. These must first be instilled into his soul. They are present in the soul, but they do not come out by themselves. And until our education system is based on a thorough and realistic understanding of human nature, we will not see people being able to place themselves in a social or democratic community with democratic and social attitudes. Even if they are not aware of it, they will always try to destroy democracy and socialism out of subconscious impulses. And if no efforts are made to educate people in a democratic and social sense, then in the long run they will live together in such a way that the democratic element will develop into some form of tyranny, and the social element will develop into something anti-social. This is certainly what has happened to the social element that is being striven for in the eastern part of Europe, and it is bound to become the most anti-social element in a relatively short time, and it already is so!

This draws the attention of anyone who is sincere about the development of humanity today to the spiritual life and education above all. And it has become necessary to place, before all else, a truly objective knowledge of the human being, spiritual life and its most important component, education and teaching. Sometimes we instinctively take into account what is at stake here, but this instinctive observation is not enough. We must imbue what underlies it with a thorough pedagogical insight. Far too little attention is paid to the fact that the growing human being shows three very different developmental stages in three successive epochsof life. The first epoch of life is that which concludes with the change of teeth, around the age of seven. The second is that which extends from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, and the third is that which then extends from sexual maturity to the end of the second human decade of life. That these three human life epochs are essentially different from each other, that education and instruction must be built upon this difference, is something that must become as clear to humanity as the laws of nature, if the social and democratic impulses are to shine forth in humanity that are necessary for a new formation of human developmental conditions.

Those who have the ability to observe the child inwardly in that important epoch of life, from birth to the change of teeth, know that all activity, all somehow directed action of the child in this completely unconscious, instinctive childhood is dominated by the principle of imitation. During this time, the child definitely strives to speak, to make faces, to move its hands, to do as those around it do, speak, make faces, move their hands. There is something of the utmost significance for human life in the child's striving to imitate, which must be met with a truly practical education. It is in this that human nature unconsciously and instinctively attempts what it can never consciously achieve in later life: to come together with other people as an individual. Through imitative action and endeavor, a sense of belonging in human society should develop, and a truly human coexistence of people should develop, through bonds from person to person.

Let us assume that humanity could decide in the present to take a radical look at this principle of imitation in the first years of childhood. If we paid attention to this, we would develop something for later life that can only be developed consciously if imitation is properly fostered in the unconscious childhood years. This imitation is not always seen in the right form. Parents come to you and say: Oh, I am very worried, my child has committed a theft, it has taken money out of the drawer! — You ask: How old is the child? — Five years. - One must then say: If all other educational conditions are in order, there is no need to be particularly concerned about this, because the child is an imitator, it does what is done in its environment. It has seen how mother so-and-so takes money out of the drawer often every day, and it imitates this. At this age, words expressing moral commandments have no influence on the child's development, only what is done in the child's own environment.

If we bear this in mind, we can lay the foundation for a suitably structured education, so that when a person is brought up in the right way, with a focus on the natural tendency to imitate, age, what can be called the right respect, the right assessment of the other person, the endeavor to respect the other person as he deserves to be respected, simply because he bears the human face. And this is the first condition for the proper development of a democracy! Democracies can only develop in the right way on the basis of the law if people in democratic parliaments shape laws that govern the relationship between people as equals. This will happen if these people have such impulses within themselves that lead to respect for human beings and can only arise if they have been educated in the right way in childhood according to the principle of imitation.

And if we now look at economic life; modern times demand a reorganization of this economic life in the sense that profit, the acquisition of capital and wages are no longer the decisive factors, but rather that consumption, the consideration of human needs is established on the basis of free associations, cooperatives, and corporations, which must proceed from the needs of human economic life, from the needs that are always present in a living way and according to which trade and production must first be established. What is based today on the blind supply and demand of the market will have to be based on insight into human interrelationships and insight into human consumption needs. Practical experience, which must be able to respond to human needs, can only develop if people have been educated in childhood according to the principle of imitation, if they have learned unconsciously to adapt to people. If they have developed respect for human life in the public legal life of the state, then they can develop understanding for human needs in the field of economic life.

Today, we must demand that in the field of economic life, coalitions, let us say, for example, cooperatives, be set up by works councils. These works councils will have a difficult time if, in the future, after understanding production and consumption, they have to take care of what is currently left to the mercy of supply and demand. But no works councils, no councils of any kind in the field of economic life will ever be beneficial if the education of the human being is not organized in such a way that the talents for these councils, that is to say for human adaptation, for this is also expressed in the understanding of human needs, that the development of these councils is not prepared by the right education in the tender childhood after the principle of imitation.

The second phase of the adolescent's life begins with the change of teeth, which means a much greater intervention in the entire organism than today's anthropology and physiology can yet foresee, because they start from external appearances, until sexual maturity. This is the age at which human nature tends towards the trust that expresses itself in the sense of authority, from the adolescent to the adult. Today, when we basically want to extend to other areas of life in an abstract way what applies to a life-giving force, today we do not even want to speak of the necessity of authority for this childhood. But if we were to disregard the orientation of this education towards a healthy sense of authority, in which unconscious inner soul drives develop that are necessary for later life, then nothing else would be able to emerge in the conscious and understanding life that can make human beings into social beings as well as democratic beings. In the first years of life, the human being orients himself to other people through imitation, so to speak. In the second age, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, he wants to adapt even more to the inner life of the other person. He wants to learn to understand the other person, wants to learn to believe in what the other person passes on to him. He wants to experience within himself, as his experience, what the other person expresses to him as an experience, he wants to look to a person who can already do what strives for existence in him. Then the human being wants to fit together socially with the other human being instinctively. When the human being has grown up, full consciousness sets in, then the blossoming of what has been experienced in childhood in response to authority will arise again.

Thus one cannot live in the right social way in the human community of democracy if one has not first found that adaptation to the human interior, which is realized in the child's sense of authority. No one will be able to stand on the ground of legal democracy in the right way today who has not learned, between the change of his teeth and sexual maturity, to look up to the other person who is ahead of him. For only when he has learned this will the true, healthy feeling arise in him: We are all equal as human beings, we must live together as human beings in such a way that equality among human beings becomes a legal reality. In the final analysis, nothing can come into being in a legal or constitutional parliament on the soil of democracy that is truly democratic, that is, that establishes what makes all people equal, if those people who make such laws have not, by their own efforts, brought up from their inmost being what has been created in the soul, when they had that feeling, so beneficial in youth, of looking up to another human being as their authority. One will never learn to recognize the other person as a truly equal one in later conscious life if one has not first felt the human value in this looking up to the other person. That equality may prevail, that democracy may become possible, depends on our learning to educate human nature according to its inner essence. For only out of the sense of authority in the child, which during the school years expresses itself in the most diverse forms, can the right sense of the equality of human beings flourish in later life.

If in economic life, on the basis of economic life, as the call for socialization also suggested, in place of the distribution of goods, which is currently dominated by capital gains and wage gains, if that distribution of goods is to be replaced by a distribution of goods that is reasonable, a system of councils, then the force that brings about this just distribution of goods must flourish – like the sense of equality in democracy – from that attraction between person and person, which in childhood can only grow out of the sense of authority. If we set up works councils and transport councils to deal with the distribution of goods, which is currently dominated by the needs of capital and wages, and if we set up such councils to , then those who carry out such distribution of goods must be imbued with that understanding of the innermost human nature that can only come from a healthy sense of authority during the child's school years. Never again must we forget what must be the human and spiritual basis for all democratic and social life.

The third age, in which most of our young people already believe themselves to be full people – they even write feature articles at this age – is that from sexual maturity to about the end of the second decade of life, into the twenties. Not only is sexual love born at this time, but what was previously a sense of authority is transformed into what is now truly active, a sense of universal human love. Through the transformation of adaptation to imitation and adaptation to authority, what actually gives us truly social instincts descends into the human soul, what makes us capable of presenting ourselves as human beings alongside one another in brotherly love. The sexual love relationship is only a special case of what occurs in this age as general human love. During this period of life, all young people, whether manual laborers or intellectual workers, must be given the opportunity, in addition to training for their practical occupation, to acquire such ideas, such concepts about the world and life, in other words, such a worldview, such knowledge about the life of nature and the spirit, that understanding arises for everything that lives, above all love, brotherhood to other people. The fact that today we still have not managed to give the apprentice, who is to hasten to a practical life, the opportunity to also receive a general world view education that does not shut him off in a class from the privileged classes, but that instead places him as a human being on an equal footing with other human beings, is what still generates anti-social impulses in our time.

And what blossoms forth in our time, when properly educated and trained in universal love of one's fellow men and brotherhood, on the soil of right and on the soil of democracy, that is what may be called true active devotion to the welfare of mankind and to the human condition. For democracy will only be able to develop by also developing, alongside the feeling for the equality of all people, what can be characterized as follows: Every human being is regarded as something to which one should devote oneself, to which one wants to serve. And on the ground of economic life it will be necessary that - I say this again - if the coincidence of supply and demand, which is based on capital and wage acquisition and on the market, is to be replaced by reasonable human cooperative and coalition institutions, then it will be necessary on this ground of economic life that the council, let us call it that, which arises there, will have to look to see whether any article here or there is too expensive or too cheap according to the general human conditions of the economic area. This council will then have to approach the people who produce an article too cheaply and tell them through their council – it should be councils that work not through tyranny and violence, but through advice – this business is unnecessary, it must therefore be shut down. You must turn to another occupation, so that only so much is produced in a closed economic area that no article is too expensive or too cheap! In this way the right mutual price relationships can exist.

This will be an important institution in the economic life of the future, that people, their insight and their understanding will be approached in such a way that they will be guided away from mere production for profit by their own inner impulses, which can be awakened, and guided towards a kind of production that serves necessary consumption, the necessary needs of the community. But what is necessary to advise in the right way here, to place people in the economic life in such a reasonable way that the mutual price conditions come about, that no surplus of labor on the one hand and no under-work on the other side is possible, which is necessary for this, can only arise in those who are to advise in economic life if, in their youth, people have developed a sense of human brotherhood, of love for their fellow human beings. For if we are to found our human development on the inner community of men, if we are to base our new development on this, not on external institutions, which would be useless, then in the future, out of democratic philanthropy, we will have to feel from those who advise us: There is brotherhood! There life is organized in such a way that the individual does not just earn capital or wages, but people work so that everyone can receive the appropriate satisfaction of needs for their life and work.

This shows how, basically, I would say, 'in between' has fallen by raising the calls for democracy and socialism, how intellectual life, in particular, must be tackled. Only by passing through imitation, authority and love in the youthful mind does the human being become a fully human being, so that what sits in his soul can be lived out democratically and socially in the human community. But only through this can people achieve what I mentioned the day before yesterday: true human freedom, which is cultivated by passing through imitation, a sense of authority and love. Therefore, one cannot say that one simply demands freedom, but one must admit: our education system must be permeated by those forces that place the human being as a free human being in democracy and in social economic life. The fact that we have neglected this principle of educating people to become free human beings out of objective knowledge within European civilization and its American offshoot is basically what has brought us to our present situation. Man is not fulfilled by the content of his soul; he only looks at external reality. He does not want to mean in life only what he has become through the content of his soul; he wants to mean what the state employs him as in a certain position. He wants to signify what makes it possible for him to gain, whether in a capitalist or wage-earning sense. As a result, we have slipped into something that is indeed given too little attention, but which has led to the worst resistance in our human culture, which is so in need of progress. We have slipped into a life that has actually lost out due to the unliving development of intellectual life: the living idea, the living inner impulse of the idea. We have descended into the world of empty phrases. Our intellectual life has become full of empty phrases, and our public life is developing under the empty phrases. This empty phrase, which is devoid of ideas, separates us from reality.

And in the area where democracy should be developing, we have slipped back into something else. Instead of increasingly equipping ourselves – this is not meant to be a historical critique, but merely a statement of fact – with the one thing that can lead to democratic laws, respect for human beings, faith in human beings as equals, and devotion to human beings – instead of that, we have developed obedience to laws and the striving to make ourselves suitable for some position in the state. In the age in which universal human love should develop, from puberty into the twenties, what has become more important than this development of a soul fund that lives entirely in the atmosphere of universal human love is what one might call the system of entitlement. Instead of making man a complete human being, he is to become some kind of official in some state, he is to become the one who can make his way in a capitalist or wage-earning manner, as in a pure commercial partnership. Obedience to the law and outward conformity — that has become man's lot because the spiritual life has been absorbed by the state, because the state has become the driving force of the spiritual life.

If we want to grasp inwardly that which can lead to real democratic equality for all people in a true constitutional state, then it is necessary to enter into the inner nature and essence of the human being. This endeavor to base the spiritual life, especially the education and school system, on the human being alone, and not to let it be shaped in such a way that the state imposes an external stamp on it, should be the endeavor of the widest circles in the present day who have an interest in the real progress of our culture and enthusiasm for it. That is why the “Federation for the Threefold Social Organism” has set itself the task of calling together those people who have such an interest to form a cultural council, or whatever it wants to be called, so that the liberation of our intellectual life, especially our education and school system, can arise from it, that the de-nationalization and de-economization of the school and education system can arise. It is understandable that those who are involved in this intellectual life as teachers or educators have a certain fear if the state no longer pays their wages. What would they do then? Yes, that is one of those experiences that unfortunately one has so often in the present, the experience that people do realize from time to time that it is necessary for a reorganization of our social conditions to take place – but that they cannot bring themselves to really want what could lead to such a reorganization. If one has spoken a lot with people about the necessary reorganization in recent times, even with those who are generally quite convinced that such a reorganization must come, then they ask one: Yes, but you must say in a certain way what will happen to the individual person, what will happen to the individual profession in the future! — Postal workers ask one, when socialization is mentioned: How does one socialize the postal worker, what will his situation be? These discussions are based on something very peculiar. People do not look at present life, they still have illusions today about the durability of the present conditions, they do not want to rise to the level of ideas of a real reorganization, and then they ask you: Yes, tell me, how will what I am accustomed to as the old be in the new order?

Such a question actually implies nothing less than the demand: How do we revolutionize the world so that everything remains the same? And if one does not answer the question: How will the old be excluded in the new order? then people say: What you are saying is completely incomprehensible to me! — That is more or less how it is when those who work in education and teaching are concerned about how their economic position will be shaped. Insofar as people in the spiritual life are involved in teaching or education, the spiritual life will be able to be organized from within, independently of state and economic life, according to purely pedagogical-didactic aspects and inward spiritual ideas; otherwise, since they also have to live, they are a economic community in the economic organism within the threefold social organism. And just as a factory naturally knows from the factory workers what it needs to satisfy its needs from economic life, so the council of economic life will also have to ensure that there is the right economic relationship between the economic body, which is independent in the three-tiered social organism, and the other economic body, which is responsible for spiritual life. And what remains between the inside as the third link of the social organism, the constitutional state, will have to ensure that what is concluded in the free economic contract between the economic body and the spiritual body is actually carried out. Those who truly want to understand inwardly and have the courage to understand that spiritual life must become free, that what is spiritual in it must be placed on its own spiritual foundation, will also be able to summon themselves to understand how the economic aspect of this spiritual part of the threefold social organism will take shape in the future.

Thus it is seen that freedom must reign in spiritual life. For this freedom in spiritual life is the foundation for the equality of the legal life, and it is also the foundation for the fraternity of the economic life. This foundation must be taken into account above all when socialization is discussed. Otherwise, yes, otherwise, one might perhaps be able to make external arrangements of all kinds, but if these external arrangements go a little further, one will end up as one has in Russia under Leninism, where one has equal rights for all – in the phrase! But today we have already reached the point where some workers have six times higher wages than others, and where certain intellectual workers already earn up to 200,000 rubles, and where there is already a strong tendency towards the old capitalism.

If you want to socialize, then you have to address the real living conditions of a healthy social organism, not just shout party phrases and Marxist papal dogmas as the only practical thing in the world. Brotherhood and true socialism will only be able to flourish if, on the basis of a genuine social education of the people, there can be those who replace anti-social instincts with social instincts, because external institutions will not create socialism. Particularly in the field of economic life it will soon become evident that socialism cannot be brought about by external institutions alone, if the people who are involved in this economic life do not understand how to organize it according to reason and fraternity, which has so far been done on this basis according to the abstract principles of capital and wage generation, supply and demand. For from the confused ideas that the relations of production develop by themselves in such a way that people can live socially in them, from these confused ideas, it is already clear enough today that social life must be brought about by man himself, the social man. It will be the organizations of people working together socially that will produce what I have described in my book, The Necessities of Life Today and in the Future, as the replacement of capital.

When we see how capital has worked, we must be clear about the fact that capital has detached people from the real, material interest in production. Instead of devoting oneself to what one produces, producing it in such a way that one imbues it with one's own attitude: In the way I make you, you serve the other people, my fellow human beings, whom I consider as brothers and sisters. Instead of giving this to the human products, today one looks at what can be written in the ledger as the selling price of the product. The actual harm of the capital and wage relationship lies in this detachment of the human being from the interest in human value. This is also the only reason why capital has come to be regarded as something that can be completely detached from real work, from directly active participation in the human community, from human endeavors, and that capital is something that multiplies by itself, that also multiplies in the hands of those who do not earn it themselves through their labor.

The damage caused by the radical capital system can be expressed in the simplest terms. In principle, all capital is brought about in a just way, in that some spiritual labor produces something that serves one's fellow human beings, as the production of goods. But in place of this connection between the spiritual powers of man and capital, something else has come into being: the personal, private ownership of land and soil, the personal, private ownership of the means of production. There can never be a right to private ownership of land and soil in a true constitutional state. The distribution of land and soil must take place in a democracy, and the utilization of capital – as I have described in my book 'The Core of the Social Question' – can only take place in the right sense if the finished means of production is no longer for sale, but is a free good. Then what is given to capital today will be given back to spiritual work.

This is what we must strive for, but we can only strive for it if we educate people in such a way that they know how to place themselves in relation to their fellow human beings with a free spirit, that they place themselves in the place themselves in the human community, and that they create organizations for economic life, which should be based only on production and consumption, that are structured into free associations, corporations, and cooperatives built on the principle of true brotherhood with an understanding of the needs of human consumption. Anyone who wants interest paid on capital without being connected to any kind of intellectual work can only have inherited the capital or otherwise received it from someone who was connected to the capital through their intellectual work. But the connection between capital and people is only justified as long as the abilities, the spiritual work of the person, justify the connection with the means of production, which are actually the capital. Socially, the possession of capital by someone who does not produce it himself is like wanting to be paid for a ship that has sunk into the ocean. A ship that has sunk into the ocean can no longer bring anything to people. It is gone, and another ship must take its place. He who draws interest on capital without working is like he who seeks to be repaid for something that comes from a sunken ship. With the loss of human abilities and with the death of the human being, the connection between him and the means of production, that is, capital, must be allowed to die.

These things are not yet clear to people today only because they run counter to present-day customs and institutions. It is only because we are accustomed to the old conditions that we do not understand them, not because the matter itself cannot be understood.

Now one can say: You claim that the things you are saying are practical, while they are actually idealistic! Yes, anyone who does not realize today that the idealistic must become practical, and that we have come to today's conditions precisely because we have always only believed that the practical consists in the routine of being together with external institutions, anyone who does not realize that this belief was deceptive and that ideas are now the practical, cannot really participate in what is necessary for the new building of our human development. We live in a time when idealism - if one wants to call it that, what is brought forward here from the practice of life - is the most practical of all.

The day before yesterday, I pointed out the great difference that exists in the human soul-disposition of the Orient and the Occident. We here in Central Europe are placed between this soul-disposition of the Orient and that of the Occident. If we recognize that we, as the middle people, have the task of bringing about a balance between the Orient and the Occident through an even, independent development of spiritual life, of the legal, political and economic life, and of economic life, we also bring about the harmonization between Orient and Occident. Then we stand on the ground from which the future must emerge for us, even if people on all sides today want to pull the ground from under our feet. They can do this to a certain extent because we, as a people of Central Europe, have neglected for decades to stand on the ground from which our true strength as a Central European people springs. But we must not forget the connections with those forces of our national character from which the great idealistic and at the same time greatest achievements of humanity have blossomed, the achievements of Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller and so on. Nor must we forget the Central European impulses from which, in another harsh period, Johann Gottlieb Fichte poured fire into the hearts of the Central European peoples. What this fact is actually based on is sensed by the other nations. But we should not merely sense it, we should recognize it. We should say to ourselves, if others hate us, and compete with us and want to destroy us by something, then it is what we have developed in recent decades, not as our very own nature, but as what is too much the same as the others, what we have imitated as un-German industrialism. If we then recognize where the true roots of our strength are, then there is still hope for us! We Germans must not place ourselves on the ground on which the merely external capitalist life of the last decades has placed us in competition with the others. We must place ourselves on spiritual ground. We must understand that that patriotism which consisted in devoting ourselves only to the hope that Germany, victorious, would bring even more capital to entrepreneurship, that patriotism, which has now been replaced by the other: Let us go over to the others, let us now be patriots there, because that is where capital can bring interest, - we must understand that this patriotism is not German patriotism!

We must be able to place ourselves on this ground. We must be able to understand ourselves as the people who are placed between Orient and Occident for a new construction out of freedom for the spirit, out of equality for the law, out of brotherhood for the economy. Over there in the East, the strongest spiritual light once arose; in the West, the fuel for this spiritual life is produced. The spiritual light of the East is dying down, has expired into nirvana. The fuel of the West will not be able to shine if it is merely placed in the darkness of the capital and wage relationships between people. We in Central Europe must draw our hope solely from the fact that we can awaken the fuel of the West into a fire that can fuel humanity through the light of the East.

This is our idealistic but highly practical task. This is what one would most like to think about in these days, which are so terribly oppressive for hearts and souls, where the fuel of the West wants to take away what we still have a little of, where we are to be plunged into material need and material misery. Many still do not understand it today, but it is so. These days proclaim it loudly: it is a matter of being or not being! And what should arise from this realization that it is a matter of being or not being is that we are called to ignite the fuel of the West with the light of the East. Today, when we are weighed down by the bitterest adversity, we may remember a saying of Spohr's, who, speaking of Germans to Germans, said: If you do not recognize yourselves, if you do not find yourselves within yourselves, then the world will lose what it can only have through you! — We may, despite all the oppression, if we have faith in the spirit, despite all the hardship and misery that await us, raise our heads to those who want to destroy us and call out to them: If you destroy us, you will destroy something that you need, that you cannot get from anywhere else but from this Central Europe that you now want to trample underfoot. You have learned to shout “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” but we want to give content to what has long since become a mere phrase in these three words, to give content from the mind by saying wholeheartedly, not half-heartedly: Liberty for the mind! We want to give it substance from the heart, by saying wholeheartedly, not half-heartedly: Equality for the law! And we want to give it substance from the whole, from the full human being, grasping this spiritually and physically, by saying not half-heartedly, but wholeheartedly: Fraternity for the economy! Fraternity for all human coexistence!

Lecture for the “Association of Younger Teachers”

It gives me great satisfaction to be able to speak to teachers for a change. For although my destiny has immersed me in the most diverse professions, and although I try to understand what is happening in the various professions and classes, especially in today's times of confusion and chaos, I also feel particularly at home, I might say, with the teaching profession, to which I myself belonged for many years of my life, albeit in a private way, but therefore under not exactly easy circumstances. But perhaps that is precisely why I feel called to specialize in what is to be said now with regard to the reorganization of conditions within human development for this profession.

One can say, especially when one surveys what is alive in the present day, alive with demands, alive with insights, more or less bright or dark insights, regarding what has to happen — one can say: If the teacher were not heard in what today, as the demand of the time, resounds throughout the world, the whole civilized world, then it would be the greatest conceivable loss for the reorganization of our lives. And if one could imagine that teachers would not turn their attention to working on this reorganization of human affairs, then this reorganization of human institutions would certainly produce something that would very soon be in need of improvement and that, on the other hand, could truly not in any way benefit humanity.

You may assume from my following remarks that I will have many objections to today's school institutions; but I ask you not to take this as if it were somehow directed against today's teachers themselves. For I fully recognize how today's teachers – even if they do not always fully realize it in the pressures of life – suffer deeply, sometimes even groan, especially under today's school conditions. But it is precisely for this reason that it may be possible to discuss what is now called the social question most profoundly and most meaningfully in the circle of teachers. After all, the teacher is also personally and to the highest degree interested in what should happen in the present and in the near future as a result of the call for socialization of human society, even if this is less important. For one may have various objections to the party programs that are floating around in the world today, more or less radically; but from these radical or less radical socialist party programs, all kinds of programs about the so-called “socialization of the school system” are also emerging. If the school system were to be socialized in line with these socialist programs, then not only would the result be what many anxious minds today fear from a transformation of human conditions in line with party socialism, but it would most likely, even if this is not yet sufficiently understood today, result in the realization of the socialist party program for the school of the purest pedagogical madness. If this is again a somewhat radical statement, please excuse it by the fact that I am not inclined to develop anything other than a factual idea, a practical factual idea, in any direction at all, and certainly not something party-related.

After this introduction, you will find it understandable that the question is raised precisely in relation to our current school system: How are the fruits of this school system manifested in practical life, in that practical life from which the call for transformation is emerging everywhere today? |

If we are not just superficially theoretical, but if we are attached with heart and mind to the school system, as the most important factor in the development of humanity, then we must say the following to ourselves. We see how today, in sometimes quite a disturbing way, people who cannot see life in its real demands and possibilities draw up party programs. We see how the belief is nurtured that people want to reform or revolutionize life, when all they can do is reform or revolutionize the worst out of it. We must ask the question, after all, haven't basically the souls of all those who now frighten so many, haven't these souls gone through our schools? We look anxiously at the proletariat today, and it must even be admitted that this anxiety is not entirely unjustified, not at all unjustified. But this proletariat has gone through our schools, and we must admit, if we are not short-sighted, that our schools have educated this proletariat as well. And in what the proletariat wants, as well as in what it is mistaken about, we must recognize something of what is expressed by the saying, “You shall know them by their fruits.” This is not meant to be a superficial, agitational phrase; it is only intended to draw attention to the cultural-historical problem of today's education and teaching. We must be clear about the following.

With the proletarian, a new human being has emerged in the last three to four centuries, but particularly in the nineteenth century: a human being who, in the previous centuries, did not yet exist with this physical and mental and spiritual constitution. What characterizes the proletarian of today is that, in contrast to other members of human society, he is, to a much greater extent than was previously the case, to a certain extent, suspended in the air with his entire human existence. And this must interest us particularly from the pedagogical point of view, that the proletarian in the present is the person who, with regard to his life, must say to himself: If he himself is induced, or if others induce him to give up his position, then he faces nothing. Then, to a certain extent, he no longer feels connected to what holds human society together. On the other hand, it must be said that the education provided by the school, especially in the period during which the proletariat developed in this way, was such that it could not make people into fully-fledged human beings. This was certainly not through the fault of the teaching staff, but through the fault of the school's dependence on the state and on economic powers! In the recent past, it would have been possible to deal with the growing child in the most appropriate way, based on real knowledge of the human becoming. However, as a teacher, one was sandwiched between two powers that basically did not always work in the sense of what the teacher had to consider his task with regard to the education of the human being through the school. Today, with the advent of the school as it has developed out of earlier conditions, the teacher is caught between the parental home and the state. Of course there are exceptions in all fields, and naturally a word that seeks to characterize something cannot always be applied to all individual cases, but on the whole it is true, even if it is radically expressed: Today the teacher has to take over the children from the parents , and when he has to hand them over to the State at the end of their schooldays, the State soon draws out of their souls what the teacher has tried to instil in them. The teacher today is actually stuck between these two extremes, which do not at all work in the sense of education through the school. And when he becomes fully aware of his profession, then he actually groans between these two distortions of his pupil, the distortion by the parental home and the distortion by the state. That is, as I said, a radical way of putting it. But do we not ultimately get different children from the parental home than those who have initially grown up with the parents themselves, who have grown up with the parents in such a way that they enter school with all the prejudices of their parents, that everything that the parents themselves carry in their minds and in their state of mind has rubbed off on them – from the class in which they find themselves? And on the other hand, we release children from school and let them go out into human life, and we have to send them out into the community. What that means for the present time is shown by the terrible situation of humanity in this era.

Of course, we have experienced great misfortune, and we will experience many more misfortunes. But have we not seen in misfortune what we could have seen in happiness if only we had had a sufficient eye for it? Have we not seen as a fundamental characteristic of the present human being that he has not actually developed the inner strength of soul during childhood that would enable him to face life in such a way that the fate of life cannot bend his thinking, his feeling, his will? Today, more than one would imagine, we find broken characters and broken natures in all walks of life. This can be seen in the dark, gloomy thoughts and ideas that people throughout the civilized world are entertaining today about the terrible events that have befallen them. Can anyone today actually imagine how this came about? Can they still see anything at all in life? Do they still feel strong enough to really fit into life energetically? More people than you would think are actually broken human natures in our time! And we also have to ask why school could not work to create a firm hold in people for life, so that they could not be broken by life and their fate?

If it had been left to schools alone for a long time to educate people in such a way that they would have to enter life through what schools had to give them, then today's conditions would be different. But that was not the case. School was able to give people something. But those people who belonged to the privileged, the leading, leading circles of people, they did not place the person in life through school, but through family, through kinship, through patronage and the like. They made sure that the young person got into this or that position in life, precisely through the connections in which they themselves stood in life. The only person for whom this does not apply is the proletarian. That is why he is the only 'modern' person for the school. The proletarian's child cannot be spoiled so much – of course by other things, but not by the parents – because the parents have no time to do so. And the child of the proletarian, when he leaves school, is not introduced into the human community by family connections, by patronage and the like, but must find his place in life by virtue of his own inner soul-life. The proletarian, the human being let loose on humanity, who can only rely on himself, is therefore in a completely different position in relation to this point than the people in the leading, guiding circles. This is what has shaped our school, given it its character; this is what needs to be considered in the present. And this is also what raises the questions from which the teaching staff in particular must take part in the great social problems of this time.

The question arises in a completely new way: How should we forge the human being for life? How should we educate through school so that the human being, in the time in which he goes through school, develops those forces that are inherent in his inner being – the forces of thinking, feeling, willing, and doing – so that they are present in later life in such strength that the vicissitudes of life cannot break them? This question, along with the fundamental questions of the proletariat, is arising with unprecedented intensity. How one must educate, educate through the school, this question takes on a new face today. And that is precisely why it is necessary, above all, for the teacher to have an opinion on how the people who are to be placed in life must be developed in a scholastic way.

What is actually being demanded now, but of whose form one has truly quite dark ideas in the various party programs and party opinions, and how such questions are actually viewed today, is shown precisely by such socialist school programs and school ideas that are being put forward. One need only look at a few of the main points of these socialist school ideas and programs. For example, certain socialist personalities emphasize the unified school. This should not be uniformed; it should be differentiated as much as possible, so that the individual human abilities and talents are taken into account. The socialists express this demand by saying: We demand the differentiation of the curriculum for the unified school, but we demand the unity of the “organization”. That is, the unified school should be organized in a uniform manner. The organizational structure should not take into account the individualities of human beings, but these should be introduced later – but how? It is very strange that such a school program could arise from socialist circles, for the simple reason that socialists, based on their materialistic view of history, always emphasize that the human being is entirely the product of external circumstances, that he is not at all the product of moral, legal, aesthetic, or religious views. All this, law, custom, religious and aesthetic views, even science, is called by socialism in its Marxist papacy a mere “ideological superstructure”. Reality for it is the way in which economic conditions are organized. That actually makes man, everything else evaporates in the human soul as an ideological superstructure. And now socialism draws up a school program in which it demands uniformity of organization and specialization of the curriculum. The curriculum would then provide something that is supposed to be more or less the ideological superstructure, and the organization provides the existing conditions in which the child is to be placed, through which the person is to be formed and shaped.

If you demand a uniformity of organization, then you are actually demanding, according to the basic ideas of socialism, the uniformity of the whole of human nature, because the differentiation in the curriculum will not make it so that the object of this differentiation is not merely the “ideological superstructure”. From this program you can see the contradictions that abound in today's demands, and what is to become of them if we imagine that these contradictions should somehow become reality from today's demands! |

But the demands of the time themselves – can we do anything against them? We cannot really do anything against the demands of the time. They are there. Humanity has at some point reached a certain level of consciousness at its present stage of development, has at some point reached a certain state of mind, which is expressed in particular in proletarian demands, which can only be the signal for a new development that takes place in a completely different way than the proletarian imagines. But a certain inner impulse has taken hold of humanity in its ongoing development, and this impulse has long been expressed in two words – in our time they have become very much a cliché and a catchphrase – democracy and socialism. These two words are emerging with ever-greater force from the depths of human development. And in our time, even though much foolishness is said about democracy and socialism, it must be said that in our time both resound with increased power from these depths of humanity. There is a demand for a greater degree of democratization of the state, and there is also a demand for a greater degree of socialization of economic life. Nothing can be done against these demands; they are certainly elementary demands of the development of humanity. But the task we face in the face of these demands is to take a reasonable position on them. What do these two demands, “democracy” and “socialism,” mean?

They basically mean that much more than has been the case so far, what happens in the state and economic community is placed in the will of the individual. In a democracy, the individual wants to have a greater measure of participation in the institutions of the state, even in the very downtrodden proletarian classes, than he has had up to now. In socialization, the individual wants to have personal influence again, a far-reaching influence on economic life. One need only recall superficially what conditions were like in earlier times, and one will have to say that human society was much more cohesive. The individual was much more inclined to conform to traditions, customs, and conventions, to what was imposed on him by the authorities, by whatever authorities. It is from this sense of authority, from this sense of authority, that man wants to extricate himself through democracy and socialization. And by wanting to take these demands into account, especially on the socialist side, what is actually being demanded for the school? Socialization is also demanded for schools. It is imagined that what is to take place among adults in public and economic life, perhaps in a somewhat weakened form, should also take place to a certain extent in schools. In a program written by a socialist thinker, it is also stated that in the future the authority of the headmaster or principal is to be abolished. They also want to limit the authority of the teacher himself to a certain extent, and they speak of school communities with a certain self-administration of the students, where the teacher is to place himself in a comradely way in the school community. And by eliminating the principal's office and the directorate, the aim is to cultivate people who are particularly suited to democracy and socialism. This means that what appears to be a developmental requirement for humanity is actually being established for children, based on the conditions of the adult community. But something is being forgotten in the process. And the fact that this is being forgotten shows how poor our present-day psychology, our present-day study of the human soul actually is. For good psychologists would never think: If the bonds between adults become weaker, then the bonds between growing children should also become weaker. Good psychologists would say exactly the opposite. They would say, well, if the demand has been made that the bonds of human community should become weaker among adults, so that there may be more democracy and socialism, then all the more reason for the children to be educated in such a way that they become capable of democracy and socialism in later life. For if they are educated as children in such a way that democracy and socialism prevail among them in the organization of the school, then they will certainly be good for democracy and socialism in later life.

That is what, I am convinced, good psychologists would have to say, who are sincere about socialism and democracy for the rising generation. They would have to say: So all the more reason to implant the seeds in the minds of children that cannot be driven out again by democracy and socialism in adulthood! But this leads us to the fundamental question of the methodology of schooling, to the fundamental questions of education, for in future this education will have to take on a different form from that of the past. In future it will have to be based, above all, on a deep consideration of the human being, of human nature itself. One will have to study human nature itself much more deeply than one can at present in order to be able to work as a teacher among children. Our natural science has celebrated the greatest triumphs in the last four hundred years. Those who are familiar with the methods and conscientious nature of scientific research also know what humanity owes to this scientific direction and scientific research ethos in the last four hundred years. But it is impossible, precisely when natural science fulfills its ideal, to recognize the human being with this natural science. One can never recognize the human being with natural science! For, with all the concepts that arise from the observation of nature, the human being can never recognize that in himself which, in him, rises above all nature, which is soul-spiritual in him. It is therefore understandable that in the age in which natural science has risen to its highest level, knowledge of human nature, especially in our Western civilization (the Orientals reproach us for this in sufficient strength), has declined more and more. Anyone who has acquired a knowledge of natural science in the modern sense knows how the actual human existence falls apart under one's hands, especially when one is a good natural scientist. But it is not the case that only natural science makes the human existence fall apart under one's hands; rather, what has become of the natural scientific way of thinking, of imagining, has taken possession of the whole consciousness of the time. It lives in every newspaper editorial, and it dominates the widest circles that today participate in the demands of the day in the latest sense. And that shows us a very significant dichotomy. I could give you many examples that could be proof of this. I will give just one.

There is a very important natural scientist today, Oscar Hertwig, who is an excellent person in his field, biology, perhaps one of the greatest, most important biologists of the present day. He wrote a book several years ago: “The Becoming of Organisms, a Refutation of the Darwinian Theory of Chance”, a very beautiful, meaningful book from a scientific point of view. Now this unfortunate man has decided that he must write a book on social issues. And this book is pure nonsense, it is worthless. This is a characteristic phenomenon. Today, one can think in a scientifically penetrating way, one can conscientiously master scientific methods, and one can know nothing at all about everything social and legal and about that through which man rises above nature. Precisely because our pedagogical thinking has also been influenced by scientific thinking, it has lost sight of the actual process of becoming and development in the human being. However, this becoming and developing human being will be the greatest problem for future pedagogy. I am well aware that some people will say that what I am about to explain in the following sentences is self-evident. But such obviousness is all too often ignored in the present day. There is a saying – as there are many sayings that are correct when applied correctly and that are totally wrong when applied incorrectly – that is: nature does not make leaps. Yes, nature makes leaps everywhere. When it transitions from a green leaf to a colorful flower, it takes a leap, and when it transitions from a colorful flower to a pistil, it takes another leap. Nature takes nothing but leaps. It is the same in human life, if you only look at it deeply enough.

We have three strictly separate life epochs for the youth of humans. The first includes childhood up to the change of teeth. This change of teeth is accompanied by a much, much more intense intervention in the human organism than current physiology in any way suspects. The whole being of the human being, as it develops from birth to the change of teeth, becomes something quite different, spiritually and mentally and to a certain extent also physically, when it has gone through the change of teeth. The second phase of life is that which extends from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. The third begins with sexual maturity and extends to the end of the second and the beginning of the third decade of life, into the twenties. A more precise study, based on the inner qualities of the human being, of the developing human being, must become the basis of a true pedagogy in future anthropology.

In the first period of life, there is a certain moment of growth for the growing child that dominates everything else: the child is an imitator. The child is so predisposed that, as an imitative being, it adopts the nature of the people around it, right down to the gestures it makes, the actions it performs, and the skills it acquires. But this goes much further than one might think. What works from person to person is actually much deeper than one usually suspects. If we are a good person in the environment of a child, then our kindness, our ability to love, our goodwill goes over to the child along with our outward gestures. And especially when we begin to learn language from our environment, then there is an overflow into the growing child of what parents and the environment otherwise keep in their souls. The child adapts completely to its environment; it becomes like its environment, because the principle of imitation prevails in human nature until the time of the change of teeth. This can be observed in individual cases.

Then parents come to you and say: Oh, we have experienced a great misfortune with our child, our boy has stolen from us! — You have to say, look, maybe what the child did does not mean theft at all, how old is the child? — Five years. — You ask further: How did the incident happen? Well, it opened the drawer, took out a coin – I am talking about a specific, concrete case – and even shared with other children what it had bought as a treat. You can then tell the parents: Of course you don't have to let something like that happen, but it happened out of nothing other than what the child has seen so often every day: the mother goes to the drawer, takes out a coin to buy something. The child imitates, does the same, not as a wrong, but as something that must happen as a matter of course out of the principle of imitation. Therefore, until the child changes teeth, parents need to be less concerned with trying to influence the child through all kinds of preaching and good teaching, which has no meaning at all, because during this time, teachings are actually only a sound that penetrates the child's ear. Instead, parents need to be concerned with being such that the child can imitate everything. This would be the best educational principle during this time.

If we reflect a little on the present situation, we will not find it so radical to say that schools very often get children who are not very well brought up. For this principle of doing nothing, saying nothing, indeed, thinking nothing, that the child might not spoil by imitation, this principle is truly still little known. But what lies in this principle of imitation? Yes, when this principle of imitation is taken into account in the first years of childhood, when the soul forces are particularly strengthened by what can be strengthened by a properly observed principle of imitation, then something arises in the child that later — because the flowering of what has been sown often occurs quite late in life — enables it to be a truly free human being. Someone who has never had such people in their environment, to whom they can give themselves so completely that they can imitate them, that they absorb into themselves what they do, is not prepared for a democratic life and will never be able to enjoy freedom in life. This is what must be considered in the context of life. As I said, we must only be clear about the fact that the blossoms and fruits of what has been sown into human life sometimes arise much later than one might think. What is sown in the first seven years of life through a correct principle of imitation is then deeply imprinted in the soul of the child and only comes to fruition in the twenties and throughout the whole of the following life. As is generally the case in life: no one acquires the ability to bless with their hand for their later life who has not been educated in their childhood to ask with their hand. What is educated in childhood often transforms into the opposite in life, asking transforms into blessing and the like.

Then the time begins, which is particularly significant for school, the time from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. This time has an underlying characteristic developmental principle in the developing human being. This is - if you really study people, you will come across it - the sense of authority. There is no way to develop certain powers of thinking, feeling and willing in the growing human being between the ages of six or seven and fourteen or fifteen that must be developed if you want to raise the child in these years without the sense of authority. One must go through it in these years, to look at one or more other people in such a way that one can say to oneself – even if one does not say it out loud as a child – but that one says to oneself inwardly: What this person says is the truth. You never learn to seek the truth in life if you have not first sought it in a person who was an authority for us. There is no way to develop certain abilities in human nature if we do not put the child in a position to be the absolute authority for the child through what we are as teachers and educators. In this respect, a kind of sacred sense of authority must prevail in the school. And if you believe that anything other than this sacred sense of authority will educate towards democracy and socialism, if you believe that a democratic-socialist school community will educate towards this, then you are very much on the wrong track. If we want adults to have an inner maturity, if one may say so, in relation to democratic and socialist life, then children must have learned to look up to teachers as authorities. Above all, we must create this atmosphere in the school if we want to educate in the right way for our time. Only when a person grows up between the ages of seven and fourteen in such a way that he or she, so to speak, climbs up to the other person who is his or her authority, will the fully developed human being develop. And this fully developed human being can only develop if we approach many things in a very thorough pedagogical way during this time. It must be said that, especially for this time, one thing in particular is characteristic when it comes to authority.

You all know Jean Paul's saying that in our first three years we actually learn more for life from our nurse than we do later in three academic years. That was still the case in Jean Paul's time. This saying is absolutely correct, there is no objection to it. But you know that much is determined by the physiology of the child. The child does not need to be maltreated in terms of his memory. He remembers so much, retains so much in his memory, than he needs to retain at this age until the change of teeth. But with the change of teeth, it becomes necessary to take careful consideration of the child's memory. Above all, we must not overload the memory during this period, that is, we must not force something into the memory that will then fall out by itself. It is hard to believe that this is not known. This, too, is a consequence of today's poor psychology. It is hard for a person when his memory is so mistreated during this time that he has to incorporate things into his memory that then fall out by themselves. Therefore, one has to ensure that one works as much as possible through repetition and the like – repetition must form the basis for the period between the seventh and fourteenth, fifteenth year – that one lays the things that one first presented in more detail, if possible in short, summarized sentences, for the memory, so that one really has certain things within oneself, at least to a certain degree, and retains certain things from these years of life within oneself, as a Christian does the Lord's Prayer, albeit to a lesser degree, so that it comes up again and again and again, and forms part of the inner life of the soul. During this time, one must not forget to focus on the development of the soul's powers. But in this respect much is sinned, for in this time more attention is paid to the school subjects that are required by life and the state than to the growing human being himself. The situation is such that everything that is as conventional for life as reading and writing is not something that is as internally based as, for example, geometry or arithmetic. The fact that we have this language, in particular, is something that is less fundamentally connected to the outside world, and also to the generality of the world. That we have these letters of the alphabet has less to do with general world conditions than, for example, a triangle having three sides or its angle sum being 180 degrees or the like. Everything that is as conventional as reading and writing can be used primarily to develop intellectuality, which particularly forms the mind. It would be going too far if I were to now expand on this sentence of a true psychology in a broader way, but anyone who looks at life from all sides will find this sentence to be true.

On the other hand, everything that is more closely related to general world conditions or that appeals to human memory, such as history or geography, is more closely related, though it may seem paradoxical, to the forces of feeling and shapes the life of feeling. And everything we teach the young child artistically shapes the life of will, and we should actually organize the individual school subjects in such a way that we have the developing human being in mind and always know: with this we shape thinking, with this we shape feeling, and with that we shape the will. It is the developing human being that matters, not a certain amount of knowledge.

Once we have these principles, children will learn something that is very rarely taught today. Nowadays, children learn a great deal: geography, arithmetic, drawing, and so on. I do not want to talk about that. But they should learn in the way I have just described; however, there is little teaching about learning. But life itself is the great school of life, and you only get out of school properly if you bring with you the ability to learn from life throughout your entire life. But you can't do that if you are grafted onto knowledge during these years. You can only do that if the school is used to develop these powers of thinking, feeling and willing in the human being in his soul. Then one learns how to learn from life. If we want democracy and socialism, then we must not be so arrogant as to think that we can determine everything and already know everything. We must get beyond megalomania. One only has to be a twenty-one-year-old reasonable, mature person to be elected into all state parliaments, to speak in a way that those people who have experience in life speak. But then one must be educated to the innermost human modesty, that we are not absolutely perfect human beings for a moment, but developing human beings from birth to death. That every day of life has a certain value, and that we do not live into our thirties in vain after going through our twenties, but that every new day and every new year always brings new revelations.

But this must be imparted as a real impulse for life through the things I have just mentioned. In the age of natural science, these things could not always be properly appreciated. In the age of natural science, for example, a principle has crept into schools that is extremely correct when viewed from one side, but highly questionable when viewed from the other: that is, the principle of visualization. I always feel a little horror when I enter a classroom and see the calculating machine there, with which the children are supposed to learn counting and adding “vividly”. In arithmetic, it is still possible. But if we radically extend the principle of vividness, it must be said that the principle of vividness in education is only justified if everything in the world is really vivid. But do you believe that everything in the world is really vivid? There are many things in the world that cannot be vivid, namely all emotional and volitional values, sympathy, antipathy, and so on. These cannot be made clear at all, they must pass from the teacher to the pupil precisely according to the principle of authority, through indeterminate fluids, if I may use this expression. This has a very great significance in terms of cultural history.

We see how people today are intellectually over-educated, especially in our Western civilization, and how they always express everything they demand of life in intellectual principles. That which is now the most intellectual, which is entirely only intellect, is the Marxist program. That is precisely the fundamental characteristic of the Marxist program, that it only received its structure from the intellect. One really only understands what is in the Marxist program when one knows that everything in it is dictated only by the intellect, often by a very sharp intellect, by an extremely sharp, ingenious intellect – but only by the intellect. In human nature, in the human soul, the individual soul powers are interrelated. If one power is developed too strongly, the others are left behind; some powers develop more, others are left behind. If the powers of the intellect are developed too strongly, the emotions are left behind at a lower level. They may become strong, but they become elementary, they become wild. And so we see that in our time of intelligence, the most desolate emotions and the most terrible instincts arise as “historical demands”. For that is what comes from Eastern Europe, what is beginning to flood Central Europe: elementary instinctive demands, which are the opposite pole to intellectuality. One would like people to start thinking about the actual connections in this regard.

For example, there are two truly bourgeois philosophers. One is more of a naturalist in the world of the nineteenth century, Avenarius, the other is Mach. One is in Zurich, where he also taught, the other in Vienna. These two people, Avenarius and Mach, had developed the scientific mentality to the highest degree. They had made this mentality into a philosophical system. Why? Because the principle of bringing only the most vivid aspects of natural science to bear on human science was everything to them.

These people were really very good, good citizens, highly respectable people, I can assure you of that. And now Avenarius' philosophy and Mach's philosophy have become the state philosophy of the Bolsheviks in Russia! This connection might seem inexplicable. On the surface, one might perhaps want to justify it by saying that many Bolsheviks studied in Zurich. But that is not the point, because no philosopher likes to be associated with someone to whom he is not inwardly related. Rather, the inner connection is that what has been expressed in such purely natural-scientific thinking is so one-sided that, on the other hand, through the mysteriousness of human nature, it evokes those emotions, those elementary instincts, which are then given full expression in Bolshevism. This is no coincidence; there is an inner lawfulness behind it. And no one has more to reflect on such things than the teaching profession, because these things belong most intensely in cultural education.

We simply have to ask ourselves how we should educate the child. We cannot just rely on formalistic methodology, pedagogy and didactics in our time, when everything is in turmoil; we have to draw on cultural history to build a healthy pedagogy. Therefore, we have to counter the principle of vividness with something that builds character. We have tried in our circle – one can have objections to some of it, but it is along the lines I have just indicated – we have tried to replace mere physiological gymnastics, where only limb movements in relation to physiology come into consideration, with e which is the soul-inspired art of movement for human beings. It will be seen that, just as it is an art, it is also, on the other hand, inspired gymnastics, and that it is precisely through this that it can achieve something significant for the education of the will. And so we must reshape many things in which we now firmly believe if we really want to count on an education of the human being through which the human being can grow into democracy and socialism in the right way. Otherwise, democracy and socialism will become the most terrible scourge for civilized humanity in the future. What must be taken into account most of all is that in an age when people want to participate, firstly in state life, secondly in economic life through all kinds of “councils”, where even what has been achieved by capital is to be replaced by the reason of the various works councils, transport councils, economic councils – that in this time, precisely in terms of their education, people must undergo what will enable them to practise what democracy and socialism demand. For democracy and socialism should not be a mere human demand; they should also represent a system of human duties and obligations.

That is how seriously we must take things today, and we must in particular bring what lies in the demands of democracy and socialism into pedagogy and education. And if a person is to develop true insight into the needs and abilities of others, if socialization is to take place, then the human being must have developed within himself that capacity for love through the principle of imitation, through the principle of authority, which brings him to true brotherhood in life. Socialism without people inclined towards brotherhood is a wooden iron! Therefore, one may say: It would be a pity not to ask the teachers first and foremost when it comes to dealing with new developments in our social future, because only from this quarter can the wind blow that will really have a healing effect with regard to the characterized demands of the time.

I can easily believe that today, and also for the transitional period, the teaching staff in particular might have serious concerns about what needs to be done to make such a school and such an education possible, as characterized here, through the efforts of the “Federation for the Threefold Social Organism”. This Federation for Threefold Order sees in the dependence of the school on the state, in the permeation of the school with the state principle, that which will make it impossible for the future to cultivate in the school what has been discussed here today. The socialists could reflect on this a little. They want to nationalize or socialize everything in a certain way. The class of people that preceded them nationalized the school. The school is completely nationalized; it is a good place to learn what nationalization is. And today, with the call for socialization, anyone who takes things seriously, anyone who is capable of seeing the big cultural and historical picture, must say: what is needed is denationalization of the school. Therefore, the “Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” has the principle of placing the school system entirely in its own hands, of giving the school system self-government, so that not even supervision remains with the state, but what is achieved in the school through self-government should grow purely out of the needs of spiritual life itself. Much will arise from this. I will give you just one example, because it may be easier for us to communicate through an example on this broad topic.

Today we distinguish between primary schools, secondary schools and universities. At the universities, education is also taught. This education is now to be given a slightly better position at the universities, but it is actually still always taught as a “minor subject”. Until now, it was like this: some philosopher was appointed to teach philosophy, and then he was also given education as a minor subject. This was usually a burden for him, he did not like doing it at all. In the future, things must be different. For in the future, everything that is spiritual life must be connected with general human life. In the future, if such an ideal as I have outlined before you today can really be fulfilled, in the future the teacher will definitely be a psychologist. He will educate the growing human being based on his in-depth knowledge of human nature, and he will know best what pedagogical truth is. Then the teacher, who otherwise teaches children, will be called to the university to teach pedagogy there. And after teaching there for a while, he will go back to school to teach children again, gain new experience, and then teach pedagogy again later. This will become a true 'Republic of Letters', as Klopstock once dreamed of. Only by taking things so thoroughly and so deeply can we make any progress at all. The present time is destined to communicate these things to the outer life.

But to accomplish all this, every sphere of the spirit must be a kingdom unto itself. At most, it could give rise to the following concern: If the state, through its regulatory measures, no longer contributes to the teacher's income, then the situation of teachers will be very dire. Well, the teacher will belong to an economic corporation, just as there are other economic corporations. Besides being a teacher, he will be part of the economic body, the third limb of the threefold social organism, and will receive his income from this independent economic entity. For the threefold social organism will have an independent economic entity, just as it has an independent state entity, where the right to cultivate on a democratic basis and as it will have its own free spiritual realm. And what today goes indirectly into the teacher's bank account through taxation will then come directly from economic life. Furthermore, it is only through the independent spiritual life that the right atmosphere for school and teaching will be created.

A healthy social organism also requires a correct evaluation of the various goods and achievements of life, one that comes from the whole human being. This evaluation of goods and achievements must be there. But in a healthy social organism, the view must not prevail that what the teacher actually achieves for the growing generation can be “paid for”. That is a gift that the teacher will impart from the spiritual world to humanity! This attitude must take hold in the healthy social organism, so that the teacher is the medium through which the abilities of the human being, the individual qualities of the human being, are brought up from their dark backgrounds, as they are predisposed in human nature. It is merely the megalomania of philistinism to believe that what can actually be achieved in the school must be paid for. What the economic body of the healthy threefold social organism will have to provide is only the opportunity for the teacher to live as all other people live. In the consciousness of this offering of the possibility of life and the evaluation of teaching, which will be the healthy impulse, without which there can be no democracy, one must completely separate. For that democracy which levels everything, which can no longer evaluate things, will only destroy things, and that socialism which believes it can pay for everything will also destroy life. Not only must the teacher himself be the one factor that is heard when the call for democracy and socialization can be followed, but the evaluation of the teaching profession itself must arise again from the constitution of the healthy social organism. The aim of the Federation for the Tripartite Social Order is to achieve independence in each of the three areas of life. Therefore, it wants to place what has so far been mixed into an inorganic, chaotic unity – economic life, spiritual life and state life – on its healthy three foundations: an independent spiritual life, an independent democratic state or legal life and an independent social economic life. And the human being forms the higher unity in the three. He will participate in all three areas. There is no need to fear that unity will be lost. Anyone who thinks that the idea of threefolding is about dividing the horse into three parts has a poor understanding of what it is about. We do not want to divide the horse into three parts; we just do not want it to be said that the horse is only a real horse when it stands on one leg. A healthy social organism stands on its healthy three legs. This is, firstly, an independent spiritual life, to which education and the school system belong; secondly, an independent legal life, to which the democratic state belongs; and thirdly, an independent economic life, which alone can be socialized. If you want to co-socialize legal life and even intellectual life, then you end up with nothing more than a socialism of economic life, which pushes everything into the uniformity of economic life, which is supposed to clothe and feed people, and which gradually drains everything that can only develop independently: state or legal life and intellectual life.

This is a serious question, especially as a pedagogical question, as a cultural pedagogical question, which in the broadest sense is the fundamental question of our time. As far as I have been able to do so in these already long considerations, I have tried to show an understanding of what the impulse of the threefold social organism really wants and what it particularly wants for the liberation and redemption of spiritual life and of the school and education system from some of the bonds in which they are bound. It would give me great satisfaction if the aims that arise from such considerations were to a certain extent taken into account by teachers and educators.

Final words after the discussion

In the lively discussion that followed, it was objected that the proletarian children had been spoiled by bad role models and were not suitable for educating “new people”. Authority would be better replaced by leadership and following, as the school communities strive for. Education is determined by the personality of the teacher, regardless of the political context. Only a new teacher training program must educate the teacher to be independent; today the teacher needs the authority of the state. The state has given the teacher authority and has not disturbed him further; he is not to be dispensed with.

Dr. STEINER: First of all I would ask to be allowed to deal with the individual questions that have been put to me. First of all the Chairman's question regarding the children of the proletariat.

If I said, or if it can be inferred from my words, that I have described the proletarian as the “type of the new man,” then I ask you not to take this to mean that the “new man” is a kind of angel. It is a very common mistake to assume that when one speaks of the new, especially in the development of humanity, one also has the view that the new is always also the better. That is the effect of a capital error of the stereotyped parties. For them, the new was always the better. In this sense, I did not want to describe the proletarian as the “type of the better man”, but only to say that he is the type of man who has developed in the last times, in the last three to four centuries, especially in the nineteenth century. When I said that the bourgeois child is pampered by its parents, I also said that the proletarian child is pampered too – I ask you to please remember that I added this subordinate clause – but it is not pampered by parents who have no time for it. The fact of the matter is that the proletarian child today is usually a bigger rascal than the bourgeois child. One can fully agree with that. And I imagine that the honored chairman, who is a teacher of proletarian children, experiences it perhaps just as horribly as he describes it. I could think that precisely because the proletarian is the type of the new man, the proletarian child is the bigger rascal. But it is so in a different way. It is not because it imitates its parents, who are in a certain class, and thus imitates the class characteristics, but because it is educated on the street and left alone, imitates everything possible. It is generally worse off. It has outgrown humanity, to which there is simply nothing particularly good to imitate today. It has grown out of a general humanity, so that in this respect it stands in life as the proletarian stands in life later on. It has more outgrown life. The bourgeois child, on the other hand, is more placed in a certain hothouse. That is the difference. There is no question that the proletarian child imitates all sorts of things and comes to school with the success of this imitation, with things that are not very desirable. But my aim was to show how new tasks arise for the proletarian child, firstly, because it does not come from its parents with very specific class peculiarities and is then not released into life that father, mother, brother, sister, uncles, aunts and others who support it, but that it needs to rely only on what has been brought up in its soul, in the whole person. One has often repeated a saying of a man who has not exactly distinguished himself favorably in his post, the saying “Free rein to the most capable.” But things have now become a cliché. Because it is easy to say “free rein for the most capable” when you really mean only your own nephew or your sister's child. So these are things that must be taken literally, not by the letter but by the spirit. We live in such a phrase-ridden world precisely because we can take things literally so little. I ask you to bear this in mind. That, then, with regard to imitation.

As for the sense of authority, it is natural that the children of the proletariat may have little to go by in this respect. But here we must strive, above all, by training our pedagogical staff, to really develop this sense of authority in the children of the proletariat.

Then it was said that it does not matter whether the personality takes care of the development of thinking, feeling and will within or outside the state. I could not really understand the question, even though it came up twice. What matters is that the personality is not deprived of its strength by being crammed into state regulations. One must simply take into account what it means when what comes from the free personality of the teacher himself cannot be passed on, but only what is introduced into what he is supposed to teach through the decrees, curricula and objectives of the state; when the aim is not to educate people to become full human beings, but to train people who will then have to serve the state in the right way at this or that point in the state.

Then the objection was raised – and this always comes up when this question is discussed – that educational interests and needs are not all that great in today's world, and that most parents would be happy if they didn't have to send their children to school. It has even been said that no one would send their children to school anymore. But what I said did not touch on the superficial question of whether or not to send children to school. In my book The Essentials of the Social Question, I speak of a child's right to education, and of the need for a corresponding contribution to education from the future economy, even in the future state. So, I am not talking about the fact that “compulsory schooling” is perceived as a nuisance by those parents who do not want to send their children to school, but rather to the fields, but I am talking about the fact that in a healthy social organism, the child has a right to an education. Now one could say: if this right exists, the state – why the state should have been hammered today, as one speaker said, I don't know – will still be there as the legal institution – but I only had to speak about the spiritual institution today. And here the objection could be raised that if this right to educate the child is asserted, then parents will have to send their children to school, and then, for all I care, compulsory schooling can be abandoned. But that has nothing to do with the self-sufficiency of spiritual life, nothing to do with what is done in schools, with the administration of the school system. I recently answered the question as follows: If there is no compulsion to attend school, if there is a right to education, you can even threaten to appoint a guardian for the child of those parents who do not want to send their children to school, who will represent the child's right to an education with the parents; then they will happily send their children to school. All these secondary questions can be answered if there is the goodwill to truly understand the main question: everything depends on the spiritual life being freely left to its own devices.

Then the conflict that arises when the state or some other force later fails to tolerate what the teacher has planted in the children as an authority has been hinted at. But it is precisely from the realization of this conflict that the demand for the separation of the school system from the state arises. It is precisely in order to avoid the impossibility of a state later not tolerating what has been placed in the soul of the child through authority at school, that the school and education system should be placed on its own ground. If the state is not at the same time the authority for the teacher, then when later in life a person is forced to do something else, he will not think back to his teacher in such a way that the teacher is now worthless to him when the state says otherwise, but he will think back in such a way that he will feel it as a difficult fate that he cannot carry out what the authority of the teacher has planted in his soul. If you think about it in detail, you will see that the solution to this conflict has already been very successful. But precisely because this conflict weighed heavily on the soul for a long time, the demand for the spiritual independence of the school and educational system has been established from an observation of life. All similar things – and there are many similar things to the conflict that has been very successfully mentioned here – are only possible if the school system is placed in what is based on democracy, in the legal life of the state.

What Mrs. B. said about authority sounded so abstract and theoretical to me that I do not believe such things can have any real significance for life, for practical life. No one could tell from what I said that I assumed that the child could form a “judgment” about the fact that the teacher is an authority. These are things that arise naturally in the atmosphere of life.

Regarding the question of teachers, it will arise from all kinds of prerequisites that in the future it will be important that there is a selection process for the teaching profession and that people are not admitted to the teaching profession merely by passing exams or acquiring a certain amount of knowledge. Knowledge can, under certain circumstances, be acquired later in a few hours, it can be caught up on from the various manuals. What matters is the whole personality, the innermost gift of the teacher. Of course, I do not mean that if one has not been immersed in this knowledge before, one can easily acquire it later in a few hours. Rather, if one needs it – one must of course have been in it before – then one can easily acquire it again later, where it is needed. What is important is that a certain guarantee be created for what should determine the teacher to teach, a guarantee that through his whole personality he is so immersed in human culture that something can pass from him to the pupil, which can then work in an authoritative way. These are things that must be considered much more deeply and thoroughly than is often attempted today, when such abstract things as “leadership” and “followership” or “school community” are put forward. I would also ask you to consider the fact that I spoke of “school communities.” What matters is that we take things as they are said, and not that we first translate them into an abstract program that we have made up ourselves.

Then there would be much talk about the question of the separation of church and state. Historically, it is the case that for a long time it simply could not be otherwise than that the school was in a certain way an appendage of the church. The state has done a good job in modern times of detaching the education system from the church and putting it on its own ground. But now we are once again faced with the necessity of improving the things that are attached to the school by making it dependent on the state, by placing the school on its own ground. The fact that these things can very easily be viewed one-sidedly and in an agitative way should not be underestimated today. In much of what is said about these things today, I hear something that is not entirely objective. We must be clear about one thing: we must not in any way arrive at a standardization of the human soul through any kind of future pedagogy or future school constitution. We must not consider something to be the only valid view of the soul and demand that it be taught to children. We must also be able to put ourselves in the shoes of people who think and feel differently. It is important not to be afraid of this when, for example, Catholic parents demand that their children also receive Catholic religious education. There is no need to be afraid of this if you yourself stand strong on your own ground. Just as you need not be afraid of any other world view if you have your own enthusiasm and strength for your own world view. These things should be allowed to develop in the free competition of ideas, but in no case by the law-making power of the state. Just as it is harmful when a church is made a state church by the law-making power of the state and thereby receives the favor of the state, it is equally harmful when a church is persecuted. No kind of religious belief should be persecuted or supported by the law-making power of the state. And anyone who starts with this thought and thinks it through to a sufficient extent will find that it is indeed necessary to put the spiritual life and especially the school and teaching system on its own ground.

What has been said about the authority exercised by the teacher not being intended to remain for life, but for the young person to break free from it, is either a matter of course or something has been misunderstood. For it is of course quite natural that one cannot be placed under the authority of a teacher for one's entire life. This authority should work towards one being able to say: What would it be like to become a teacher? Then, through what the teacher's authority has placed in one's soul, one would be able to become an authority oneself. But one must grasp things much more thoroughly and deeply, because a teacher's authority can indeed be maintained throughout one's entire life. I have already said that what the teacher gives in education cannot really be 'paid for'. Payment means something quite different. But what education can do is to shape the mutual relationship between teacher and student in such a way that the teacher can remain an authority for a person throughout their life. And I would like to ask what could be more beautiful than to remember a teacher later on, when one has reached the age of sixty and can look back to one's youth, and then say to oneself: This teacher was an authority for me, I still feel the greatest gratitude towards him today, I have become what I am partly through him! This authority can be retained and can live on in a lifelong gratitude towards the teacher. These are the things that a psychology that is equal to today's tasks must take into account.

If it has been said that the state is necessary after all, or that it can be replaced by a spiritual senate or the like, then it has already been said: Those who have not felt state coercion have simply not seen it. And you see, the fact of the matter is that it really is the case that being a teacher of the state has become second nature to many people. And when it has become their second nature, they no longer realize that their free personality does not actually teach from the sources of spiritual life, but they have become accustomed to the state, have become accustomed to continuing in teaching what the state offers them. They feel “free”. But this feeling of freedom is no proof that one is really free, especially in the mentality of present-day humanity.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that a person who is the “great world teacher” for a large number of people, Woodrow Wilson, gives such a strange definition of what he understands by freedom in his writing “On Freedom” that one could climb up on the walls. He says something like: You can call a mechanism that has no inhibition and runs as the various events cause it to; or you can call a ship that moves in the same way according to the same principle free. But this mechanical freedom is not the real one we mean: you have to feel it.

Then, too, many things have been said that I have not said at all. In particular, the gentleman who defended the state spoke of all sorts of such things. I did not speak at all about the present state, but anyone who understood me correctly will know that I said: From what is being striven for by today's socialists, this and that threatens to become reality, and what must not come about would come about, so things must be arranged in a certain way. — Now, my dear audience, I really cannot go into things that are only constructed from my words and then polemicized against. But there is one thing I would like to address: An authority will also be necessary for the teacher again. I did not say anything about the authority that will be necessary for the teacher, but I did say that the teacher should be an authority for the child! Whether an authority is necessary for the teacher is a completely different question, which will be answered by the fact that ultimately life itself will take care of it. Pay attention only to life as it is, that is far too little observed today. Pay attention only to life and reality, and you will say to yourself: Yes, people are so different from each other that ultimately someone who can be an authority in the most diverse ways will still find an authority above himself. It will be taken care that someone can always find an authority above himself. Well, this does not have to lead to a supreme pinnacle. A person can be an authority simply by being superior in other respects.

When I spoke of Klopstock's “Republic of Letters”, it does not mean that everyone will now do as they please. Rather, they will not simply do as they please, but out of the needs of intellectual life, in order to make it as fruitful as possible, there will again be a voluntary leaning towards those who are to be an authority in the future. A “constitution” that is not based on rigid laws, on bony, state decrees, a constitution can be conceived in the free spiritual life; only it will relate to the real, living conditions of the people who participate in this spiritual life. The “law”, however, must first be replaced on this ground by the free human relationships, which are, after all, individual and can always change from week to week, and which cannot be bound by rigid laws and immortalized in some rigid form. What is important, therefore, is that spiritual life be given the opportunity to live in the form that is possible for it out of its own strength, so that the teacher of the school is not dependent in any way on a state official, but that he in a human, objective and appropriate way, as follows from the spiritual life, by another person who is also directly involved in the spiritual life and works with him in the same spiritual life. That is what matters. We can see that even today there is a certain fear of independence in spiritual life, and that many feel comfortable under the protection of the state. But that is precisely the point: so many feel comfortable under this state protection. However, this state protection is being sought even more by those who now want to succeed.

The development of the last few centuries was such that the state had power from earlier conquests and similar circumstances, and then little by little individuals wanted to get hold of this power in order to be protected by it. For a time it was the church. It preferred not only the living word, flowing from the spirit and convincing people, but also a little help from the police. Then came the schools. They preferred not the living word flowing from the spirit to reach the child, but state compulsion behind it. Then, in the end, the various economic classes and corporations also came, until we finally got that economic corporation – in Germany, of course, the industrialists and heavy industrialists in particular were keen on this – which also wanted a share of the power of the state. And then behind them were the Social Democrats, who in turn wanted to take the state for themselves. So the state power was the gathering place for everyone. What the future must strive for is that state power should not be a gathering place for everything that wants to creep under this power, but that it should be placed on democratic ground. But what matters is that on this state ground that which the mature human being has to agree with every other mature human being should be realized; there we are dealing with what the mere constitutional state is. It is remarkable that people still do not want to understand this today, although it was very close to understanding this constitutional state when someone who was once Prussia's Minister of Culture came to a correct understanding of these conditions. In Humboldt's essay “On the Limits of the Effectiveness of the State” you will find beautiful approaches to what the state should actually be. But if it is to be “democratic”, then only that which every mature person has to do with every other mature person may prevail in it. Then that which can be discerned in spiritual life must be taken out of the actual life of the state, and then the state must not include economic life, where what matters is economic experience, credit, and so on. That is to say, if anyone seriously wants democracy, then he cannot want socialism and intellectual life in the state, but must say to himself: If democracy is to be carried out, the only healthy thing to do is to place the intellectual life on the one hand and the economic cycle on the other in free territory. The fact that this is not understood – in Russia it has not been understood! has the effect that today something highly undemocratic, even anti-democratic, is being striven for in economic life: the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat. I encountered this in its most blatant form a few months ago in Basel, when after a lecture someone stood up, obviously a communist, and said: If the salvation of the future is to come about, Lenin must become world ruler! — You call for 'socialization' with these people and you don't even understand the very beginning of socialization, namely that you first have to socialize the relationships of domination; that socialization does not consist of monarchizing the relationship of domination and imperializing socialism. They think they want to socialize, but they don't even want to start with the socialization of the power relations, but instead they appoint an “economic pope” over the whole world. That is how they think.

These are the contradictions that arise today. That is why one would like to have a sense that the things that come to light in the threefold social organism are based on something deeper. We did not arrive at the idea of threefolding by being able to say, out of arbitrary, abstract principles and out of habits of life: I believe or I do not believe in these things. Of course, many things have to be placed in their proper context. But the impulse for the threefold social order comes from a truly hard observation of life and from a felt seriousness about the great cultural tasks of the present time. If one honestly wants socialism and democracy, then one must not simply want what many people say when they put it together: “social democracy.” Because in that way, spiritual life is not properly taken into account. On the contrary, anyone who honestly wants democracy and socialism needs above all a truly free spiritual life, which cannot be an arbitrary spiritual life. The impulse for threefolding has arisen out of an understanding of reality and out of a sense of the seriousness of present-day conditions. In these days we in Central Europe should feel here very particularly how serious the times are. We should in this time, when we have to say to ourselves: the question is one of life or death! — we should feel that we need to rethink and relearn about many old things, and that for the future it cannot be a matter of small changes to some institutions, but of a real rethinking, re-feeling and re-learning of the whole human being. Only in this way will we understand our time and only in this way will we be able to truly move forward!

Study evening on “The key points of the social question in the necessities of life today and in the future”

Stuttgart, July 30, 1919

This evening I do not want to anticipate what these study evenings, based on the book 'The Key Points of the Social Question', are actually supposed to be; instead, I will try to give you a kind of introduction to this evening. I would like to use this introduction to give you a sense of the perspective from which this book was written. Above all, it was written from the immediate present, from the conviction that the social question has also taken on a new form through the events of the present, and that it is necessary to talk about the social question today in a completely different way than it was talked about from any side before the world war catastrophe. With this book, an attempt has been made at a time in the development of humanity when the social question is becoming particularly urgent and when every person who is consciously living today, who is not sleepily and sleepily living the life of humanity, should know something about what has to happen in the sense of what is usually called the social question. Perhaps it would be a good idea to look back a little today. I may mention things that you are partly aware of, but we will then put them in a slightly different light. You probably know that what is being said today about the social question has been said for a relatively long time. And today the names Proudhon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc are mentioned as the first to have dealt with the social question in the mid-nineteenth century. You know, of course, that the way in which this social question was treated until the middle of the nineteenth century is called by today's representatives, at least by many of today's representatives of the social question, “the age of social utopias.” It is good to be clear about what is actually meant when one says: In its first stage, the social question arose in such a way that it lived in this age of utopias. But one cannot talk about this matter in the absolute sense, but one can actually only talk about the feelings of the representatives of the social question in the present. They feel the way I am about to describe it. They feel that all social questions that arose in the age of which I want to speak first were in the stage of utopia. And what do people mean when they say that the social question was in the stage of utopia at that time? By this they understand the following: Saint-Simon and Fourier observed that even after the French Revolution there were people in a certain social minority who were in possession of the means of production and other human goods, and that there were a large number, even the majority, of other people who do not have such property and can only work with the means of production by entering the service of those who own the means of production and the land, people who basically have nothing but themselves and their labor. It has been observed that the life of this great mass of humanity is one of oppression, and that it lives in poverty to a large extent in relation to those who are in the minority. And attention has been drawn to the situation of the minority and to the situation of the majority.

Those who, like Saint-Simon and Fourier, and even Proudhon, have written about the social situation of humanity, have started from a certain premise. They started from the premise that it is necessary to point out to people: Look, the great mass lives in misery, in bondage, in economic dependency, this is not a decent existence for the great mass. This must be changed. And then all kinds of means were devised by which this inequality among people could be changed. But there was always one specific prerequisite, and that prerequisite was that one said to oneself: If one knows the reasons for this inequality, if one has enough words of warning, if one has enough moral awareness oneself to strongly pointing out that the vast majority of people live in economic and legal dependence and are poor, this speech will touch the hearts and souls of the minority, the wealthy, the more favored minority. And it will be through this that this minority realizes: it cannot remain so, changes must be made, a different social order must come, a different social order must be brought about. The prerequisite was that people would be willing to act on their innermost spiritual impulses to liberate the masses of humanity. And then they suggested what should be done. And it was believed that if the minority, if the people who are the guiding, leading people, realize that what one wants to do is good, then there will be a general improvement in the situation of humanity.

A great deal of extraordinarily clever things have been said from this side, but all that has been undertaken in this direction is felt today by most representatives of the social question to be utopian. That is to say, today one no longer counts on the fact that one only needs to say: This is how one could set up the world – then the economic and political and legal inequality of people would end. Today, it is of no use appealing to the understanding and insight of those who are favored, who have the privilege, who are in possession of the means of production and the like. If I am to express what has been lost in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, I have to say that faith in the insight and goodwill of people has been lost. Therefore, the representatives of the social question, as I now understand it, say: it is all very well to come up with grandiose plans for how to organize the human world, but nothing comes of it; because no matter how beautiful the plans are, no matter how touching the words of appeal to the hearts and souls of the ruling minorities, nothing will happen. All these are worthless ideas, and worthless ideas, which paint the future, are in reality, to put it popularly, utopias. It is therefore useless, so they say, to imagine anything that should happen in the future, because there will be no one who lets go of his interests, who can be moved in terms of his conscience, in terms of his moral insight and so on. Faith in conscience and moral insight has been lost in the broadest circles, especially among the representatives of the social question. People say to themselves, people do not act according to their insight when they make social arrangements or when they live their social lives, they act according to their interests. And the haves naturally have an interest in keeping their possessions. The socially privileged have an interest in maintaining social privileges. It is therefore an illusion to count on the fact that you just need to say that people should do this or that. They just don't do it because they don't act out of their insight, but out of their interest.

In the broadest sense, it can be said that Karl Marx gradually, but really only gradually, came to accept this view. One can describe a whole series of epochs in the life of Karl Marx. In his youth, Marx was also an idealistic thinker and still thought in terms of the realizability of utopias, in the sense that I have just characterized it. But it was precisely he, and after him his friend Engels, who in the most radical way possible abandoned this calculation of people's insight. And when I characterize something in general that is actually a great story, I can say the following: Karl Marx finally came to the conclusion that the world could not get better in any other way than by calling on those people who have no interest in keeping their goods and privileges. These people cannot be seen at all, they must be left out of the calculation altogether, because they will never deign to respond in any way, no matter how beautifully they are preached to. — On the other hand, there is the great mass of proletarian laborers, and Karl Marx himself came to believe this during the period when what is now called the proletariat was basically only emerging in Central Europe. He saw the proletariat emerging from the different economic conditions in Central Europe. When he then lived in England, it was of course different. But at the time when Karl Marx developed from an idealist into an economic materialist, the modern proletariat was only just emerging in Central Europe.

And now he said to himself: this modern proletariat has completely different interests than the ruling minority, because it consists of people who own nothing but their labor, of people who cannot live in any other way than by putting their labor at the service of the propertied, namely at the service of those who own the means of production. If these workers leave their jobs, they are, and this was particularly true in those days in the most radical sense, thrown out onto the street. They have no other prospect before them than the possibility of serfdom for those who own the means of production. These people have a completely different interest from the others. It is in their interest that the entire previous social order should come to an end, that this social order should be transformed. You don't need to preach to them in order to be seized by their insight, but only by their selfishness, by their interests. You can rely on that. To preach to those on whose insight one should count, nothing comes of it, because people do not act on insight, they act only out of interest. So one cannot appeal to those to whom one should appeal to insight, but to those to whose interest one must appeal. They cannot help but advocate for the newer times out of inner compulsion. That is the egoism that Karl Marx has developed into. Therefore, he no longer believed that the progress of humanity to newer social conditions could come from any other human work than from the work of the proletariat itself. The proletariat can only, according to Karl Marx, strive for a renewal of human social conditions out of interest, out of its own selfish interests. And in so doing, the proletariat will liberate all of humanity, not out of philanthropy, but out of self-interest, because there can be nothing left but what people can achieve, people who are not attached to old goods and have nothing to lose by transforming the old goods.

So one says to oneself: On the one hand, there are the leading, guiding circles, who have certain rights that were granted to them in earlier times or that were enforced by them in earlier times, which they have inherited in their families, and they hold on to them. These leading, guiding circles are in possession of this or that, which they in turn inherit within their circles, their family, and so on. These circles, as the leading, guiding circles, always have something to lose in a transformation. Because, of course, if they lost nothing, no transformation would happen. The point is that those who have nothing should get something, those who have something could only lose. So one could only appeal to reason if this reason would give the possessing, leading class the impulse to want to lose something. They won't go for that. That was Karl Marx's view. So you have to appeal to those who have nothing to lose. That's why the Communist Manifesto ends with the words: Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, but they have everything to gain. Proletarians of all countries, unite!

Now you see, since the publication of the Communist Manifesto, this has become a conviction, so to speak, and today, when certain sentiments that are already influenced by this view are alive precisely in the majority of the proletariat, today one can no longer properly imagine what a tremendous turnaround in socialist thought took place around the mid-nineteenth century. But it would be good if you would take something like The Gospel of a Poor Sinner by Weitling, a journeyman tailor who wrote it not so long before the Communist Manifesto, and compare it with everything that was written after the Manifesto appeared! In this “Gospel of a Poor Sinner,” truly inspired by genuine proletarian sentiment, there is a language that is, one might say, in a certain sense even poetic, glowing language, but it is certainly a language that seeks to appeal to people's good will, to their insight. Weitling is convinced that something can be done with people's good will. And this conviction only disappeared around the middle of the nineteenth century. And the event that caused it to disappear is precisely the publication of the Communist Manifesto. And since that time, since 1848, we can actually trace what we call the social question today. For if we wanted to talk today like Saint-Simon, like Fourier, like Weitling – yes, we would really be preaching to the deaf. Because to a certain extent it is absolutely true that you can't achieve anything on the social issue if you appeal to the insight of the leading and guiding circles who have something. That is quite right. The leading and ruling circles have never admitted this, and they are hardly likely to do so today. They are not even aware that they do it, because unconscious forces in the human soul play an extraordinarily important role here.

You see, in the course of the nineteenth century, our intellectual culture has almost entirely become a cliché. It is a much more important social fact that we live in cliché with regard to intellectual culture, it is a much more important social fact than is usually thought. And so, of course, the members of the leading and ruling circles also talk about all kinds of nice things when it comes to the social question, and they themselves are often convinced that they already have the good will. But in reality they only believe that, it is only their illusion. The moment anything real is attacked in this regard, it immediately comes out that it is an illusion. We will talk about that later. But as I said, we can no longer talk as we did in the age of utopias. That is the real achievement that came through Karl Marx: he showed how humanity today is so enmeshed in illusionism that it is nonsense to count on anything but egoism. It must be counted with one day. Therefore, nothing can be achieved if we want to somehow count on selflessness, on goodwill, on the moral principles of people - I always say: with regard to the social question. And this change, which has led to our having to speak quite differently today than was possible in the first half of the nineteenth century, for example, with regard to the social question, this change has come with the Communist Manifesto. But it did not all come at once. Even after the Communist Manifesto, it was still possible, as you all know – some younger socialists have already forgotten the time – for a very different kind of social thinking, the kind of Ferdinand Lassalle, to capture hearts and souls well into the 1860s. And even after the death of Lassalle, which occurred in 1864, what was Lassallean socialism continued. Lassalle is one of those people who, despite the fact that the other way of thinking had already emerged, still counted on the power of ideas. Lassalle still wanted to reach people as such in their insight, in their social will above all. But this Lassallean tendency gradually diminished, while the Marxist tendency gained the upper hand, which only wanted to take into account the interests of that part of the human population that only had itself and its labor power. But it did not happen so quickly. Such a way of thinking only develops gradually in humanity.

In the 1960s, 1970s and even the 1980s, it was certainly the case that people who belonged to the proletariat, or who were politically or socially dependent even if they were not proletarians, viewed their dependency in moral terms and morally condemned the non-dependent sections of the human population. In their minds, it was the maliciousness of the leading and guiding circles of the human population that they left the great mass of the proletariat in a state of dependency, that they paid them poorly and so on. If I may put it trivially, I can say that in the 1960s and 1970s, and well into the 1980s, a great deal of social indignation was manufactured and, from the point of view of social indignation, spoken. Then, in the mid-1980s, the strange turnaround actually only really occurred. The more leading personalities of the social movement then stopped talking about the social question out of moral indignation in the 1980s. That was the time when the great leaders, who were more or less still glowing with youthful zeal, were those whom you, who are younger, only saw die: Adler, Pernerstorfer, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Auer, Bebel, Singer and so on. It was precisely in the 1880s that these older leaders increasingly stopped preaching this indignant socialism. And now I would like to express it to you as if these leaders of socialism were expressing their innermost convictions when they transitioned from the old indignant socialism to their newer socialist worldview. You will find that what I am about to tell you is not in any of the books on the history of socialism. But anyone who lived through those times knows that if you left people to their own devices, that is how they would have spoken. So let us assume that in the 1880s, leading proponents of socialism were in discussion with others who were still bourgeois in their attitudes, and let us assume that there was a third group: bourgeois who were idealists, who wished everyone well and who would have agreed that everyone should be made happy. Then it could happen that the bourgeois declared that there would always have to be people who are poor and people who are rich and so on, because only that could maintain human society. Then perhaps the voice of one of those who were idealists would be heard, who were indignant that so many people had to live in poverty and dependence. Such a person might say: Yes, it must be achieved that it is made clear to these propertied people, the entrepreneurs, the capitalists, that they must let go of their possessions, that they must make arrangements by which the great masses come into a different position, and the like. Very fine speeches were made on these lines. But then someone who was just becoming interested in socialism and its development at the time raised his voice and said: What are you talking about, you're a child! It's all childishness, all nonsense. The people who are capitalists, who are entrepreneurs, they are all poor wretches who know nothing but what has been drummed into them by generations. If they were to hear that they should do it differently, they wouldn't even be able to do it, because they wouldn't come up with how they should do it. It doesn't even occur to them that something can be done differently. You must not accuse people, you must not morally condemn people, they cannot be morally condemned; the guys have grown into this, these poor darlings, into this whole environment, and that inspires them with the ideas they have. To morally accuse them is to misunderstand the laws of human development, to have illusions. These people can never want the world to take a different form. To speak of them with indignation is pure childishness. It has all become necessary in this way, and it can only become necessary again in another way. You see, you can't do anything with such childish fellows who believe that they can preach to the propertied, to the capitalists, that a new world order should be established, you can't do anything with such childish fellows. A new world order cannot be brought about with them. They only indulge in the belief that one can accuse these poor capitalists of making a different world.

I have to make the matter somewhat clear, so some things are said in sharp contours, but in such a way that you could hear the speeches I am talking about absolutely everywhere. When they were written, they were retouched a bit, written a bit differently, but that was the basis.

Then they continued: “With those guys – they are idealists who imagine the world in terms of an ideology – we can't do anything. We have to rely on those who have nothing, who therefore want something different from those who are connected with capitalist interests. And they will not strive for a change in their circumstances out of some moral principle either, but only out of covetousness, to have more than they have, to have an independent existence. In the 1980s, this way of thinking increasingly came to be seen as the development of humanity, no longer in the sense that the individual is particularly responsible for what he does, but that he does what he has to do out of his economic situation. The capitalist, the entrepreneur, exploits the others in the utmost innocence. The proletarian, on the other hand, will not revolutionize out of a moral principle, but in all innocence out of a human necessity, and will take the means of production, the capital, out of the hands of those who have it. This must take place as an historical necessity.

Now, you see, it was actually only in 1891 at the Erfurt Party Congress that all Lassallianism, which was still based on the insight of the people, was replaced by belief in the so-called “Erfurt Program”, which was intended to make Marxism the official view of the proletariat. Read the programs of the Gotha and Eisenach party conferences, and you will find two demands that are genuinely proletarian demands of the time, still connected to Lassallianism. The first demand was the abolition of the wage relationship, the second demand was the political equality of all people, the abolition of all political privileges. All proletarian demands up to the 1890s, up to the Erfurt Party Congress, which brought about the great turnaround, were based on these two demands. Take a close look at these two demands and compare them with the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress.

What, then, were the main demands of the Erfurt Party Congress? They were: the transfer of private ownership of the means of production into common ownership, the administration of all production by a kind of large cooperative, into which the existing state must be transformed. If you compare the former program, which was the proletarian program of the 1880s, with what emerged from the Erfurt Party Program and has existed since the 1890s, you will say that the old Gotha and Eisenach programs still contain purely human demands, the demands of socialism: political equality of all people, abolition of the degrading wage relationship. In the early 1890s, the attitude that had emerged during the 1880s was already having an effect. What is more a demand of humanity has been transformed into a purely economic demand. You no longer read about the ideal of abolishing the wage relationship, you only read about economic demands.

Now you see, these things are connected with the gradual development of the idea that one had of externally bringing about a better social condition for humanity. It has often been said by people who still had ideals: what harm does it do to smash everything to smithereens, a different order must be brought about, so a revolution must come. Everything must be smashed to smithereens, the great Kladderadatsch must come, because only a better social order can arise from it, many people still said that in the 1880s, who were good, idealistic socialists. To which the others replied, who were in touch with the times, who had become the leaders, those who, as I said, are now buried, they said: It's all pointless, such sudden revolutions are senseless. The only thing that makes sense is to leave capitalism to its own devices. We see that in the beginning there were only small capitalists, then there were big ones, they joined forces with others, became capitalist groups. Capital has become more and more concentrated. We are in the process of capital becoming more and more concentrated. Then the time will come when there will actually only be a few large capitalist trusts and consortia. Then it will only be necessary for the proletariat, as the non-possessing class, to peacefully transfer the capitalists' property, the means of production, into community property one fine day, through parliamentary channels. This can be done quite well, but we must wait and see. Until then, things must develop. Capitalism, which is an innocent child anyway, it is not its fault that it is exploitative, that is brought about by historical necessity. But it also works in advance, it concentrates capital. They are then nicely together, then they only need to be taken over into the public domain. Nothing of rapid revolution, but slow development!

You see, the secret of the view, the public secret of the view, which underlies this, was discussed beautifully by Engels in the 1890s. He said: Why fast revolutions? What happens slowly under the development of modern capitalism, this massing of capitals, this concentration of capitals, it all works for us. We don't need to establish a common ground first, the capitalists are already doing that. We just need to transfer it into proletarian ownership. Therefore, Engels says, the roles have actually been reversed. We, who represent the proletariat, have no complaints about the way things have developed; it is the others who have complaints. Because the guys who are in the circles of the propertied people today have to say to themselves: We accumulate capital, but we accumulate it for others. You see, the guys actually have to worry about losing their capital. They get hollow cheeks, they get scrawny from these worries about what will become of it. We socialists are doing very well in this development. We will, says Engels, get bulging muscles and full cheeks and look like eternal life. Engels says this in an introduction he wrote in the 1890s, characterizing what is developing, and how one need only wait for the development, which is actually being taken care of by capitalism itself, ism itself, which then leads to what I have presented to you: the transfer of what capitalism has concentrated into the common ownership of those who have had nothing so far. That was also actually the mood with which the twentieth century was entered by the leading circles of the proletariat. And so it was thought, especially since the time when Marxism was no longer taken as it was in the 1890s, but when, as it was said, it had been subjected to revision, when the revisionists appeared, when those who are still alive but are old people, such as Bernstein, for example. Then the revisionists came. They said that the whole development could be advanced somewhat, because if the workers only work until the capitalists have gathered everything together, they will suffer hardship before then, they will have nothing in their old age. So assurances were made and so on. That's all well and good, but above all, they saw to it that the institutions that the leading classes had in political life were also appropriated. As you know, this is how trade union life in particular came about. And within the Socialist Party, there were two strongly divergent directions: the declared trade union party and the actual, as they said at the time, political party. The political party was more down-to-earth, a sudden revolution would be of no use, the development had to take place as I have just described. Therefore, it is important to prepare everything for the one point in time when capitalism is sufficiently concentrated and the proletariat has a majority in parliament. Everything must be pursued through parliamentarism, the acquisition of the majority, so that at the point in time when the means of production are taken over into public ownership, the majority is also there for this transfer. In this group of people, who thought very highly of the political party, at the end of the nineteenth century, not much was thought of the trade union movement. At that time, the latter was committed to establishing a kind of competition between itself and the entrepreneurs in order to obtain wage increases and similar things from the companies from time to time. In short, they set out to imitate the system of mutual negotiations that exists among the leading and managing circles themselves, and to extend it to the relationship between the leading circles and the proletariat. You know, of course, that those who were most accused by the representatives of the actual political socialist system were those who became most bourgeois under the trade union movement. And at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, you could see everywhere among those who were more attuned to the political system a great contempt for those people who had become completely absorbed in trade union life, such as the printers, for example, who had developed a completely different system after union life, again to the extreme.

These were two very strictly separate directions in social life: the trade unionists and those who were more inclined towards the political party, as they said. And within the trade unions, the printers in the printers' association were almost the model boys; the model boys who had earned the full recognition of the bourgeoisie. And I believe that just as there was a certain fear, a certain concern about the political socialist party, so little by little we saw the emergence of such good people as the people in the printers' association, and we were very pleased about that. One said to oneself: They are becoming bourgeois, you can always negotiate with them, it works quite well. When they strike with their wages, then we strike with our prices, which we demand. It works. And, right, it worked for the next few years, and people don't think beyond that. So one was very satisfied with this exemplary development of the trade union movement. Well, if I omit some of the more subtle nuances, one can say that these two directions more or less emerged until the times that were then surprised by the world war catastrophe. But unfortunately people did not learn everything from this world war catastrophe that should have been learned with regard to the social question.

As soon as one considers the conditions in Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, if one disregards the Anglo-American world and also partly the Romance world, if one limits oneself to Central and Eastern Europe, then we can say that history has not really turned out as one would have liked. History has always been defined as follows: capital is concentrated, then the majority is in parliaments, then capital is transferred into the ownership of the community, and so on. The catastrophe of the world wars has ensured that this cannot be expected to happen so smoothly today. Those who expected some kind of revolution have often been portrayed as childish. But basically, what has happened in the last four to five years? Let us keep clearly and distinctly in mind what has happened. You have often heard what happened in the last four or five years: in July 1914, the governments went a little bit mad or went mad in the head and rushed the people into a world war. The people believed that it was a world war, battles took place, although with the modern means of warfare, with the machine means, something completely different was there than in previous wars. There was no possibility of anyone becoming a particularly famous general, because ultimately it only came down to whether one side had a larger quantity of ammunition and other means of warfare, whether one side was better at producing the mechanical means of war than the other, or discovered a gas and the like that the others did not have. First one side won, then the other side discovered something, then the first side again; the whole thing was a terribly mechanical warfare. And all the talk about what happened here and there on the part of people was influenced by the phrase, it was nothing but a phrase. And little by little modern humanity will also realize in Central Europe what was put into it as a phrase when one or the other, who was actually nothing more than a somewhat twisted average soldier, was made a great commander in Central Europe. These things have only become possible under the influence of the phrase.

But what really happened? People did not realize this before the external events: in reality, while people believed that a world war was being waged – which was actually only a mask – a revolution was actually taking place. In reality, the revolution happened in these four to five years. People still do not know this today, they still do not pay attention to the fact that in reality the revolution has taken place. War is the external aspect, the mask; the truth is that the revolution has taken place. And because the revolution has taken place, the society of Central and Eastern Europe is in a completely different condition today, and one cannot start with what people had in mind for earlier situations. Today it is necessary that all the thoughts that were formed earlier be completely reorganized, that one think about things in a completely new way. And that is what has been attempted in the book 'The Essential Points of the Social Question', to calculate quite correctly with the situation in which we have ended up as a result of the very latest events. It is therefore no wonder that people, who cannot keep up fast enough in the socialist parties, encounter misunderstanding after misunderstanding in this book. If people would just take the trouble to examine their own thoughts a little, to examine what they say they want, they would see how they live under the influence of the ideas they formed up to 1914. That is the old habit.

These ideas that were held until 1914 have become so engrained in people's minds that they cannot be shaken off now. And what is the consequence? The consequence is that, although a new approach is needed today, although the revolution has taken place in Eastern and Central Europe, although we now need to build up not according to old ideas but according to new ideas, people nevertheless preach the old ideas. And what are the parties today, including the socialist parties? The socialist parties are also those who continue to preach this or that socialist gospel in the old way, as they preached until July 1914; for there is no difference in these party programs from the earlier ones, except at most the difference that comes from outside. For those who know the issues, there is terribly little that is new, indeed nothing at all that is new, said in the individual party groupings. The old party ideas are being trotted out again. Of course, there is a slight difference: if you have a copper kettle and tap it, it makes one sound; if you tap a wooden barrel in exactly the same way, it makes a different sound. But the tapping can be exactly the same. It is the fact that it sounds different that depends on what you tap. That is how it is when people come up with their party programs today; what is contained in these old party programs is actually the old party storekeeper. It just sounds a little different today because the social conditions are different, just as it would with a copper kettle and a wooden barrel. When the Independent Socialist Party or the Majority Socialists or the Communists speak, they speak the old party phrases, and it sounds different because there is a copper kettle and a wooden barrel. In reality, many have learned absolutely nothing. But what matters is that one learns something, that one is aware of this terrible world war, as it is called, but which is actually a world revolution.

And here one can truly say: in the broad masses, people are prepared to hear something new. But with the broad masses it is like this: they listen to what the leaders say. There is a good understanding, a good, healthy human understanding in the broad, uneducated masses, and one could actually always count on understanding when one presents something timely, something correct, in the best sense of the word timely. This is partly due to the fact that the masses are uneducated. But as soon as people enter the kind of education that has been available for the last three to four centuries, this godly quality of being unspoiled ceases to exist. If you look at what today's bourgeois school education is, from elementary school up to university – and it will be at its worst if the socialist unified school is founded now, because then everything that has been done wrong by the bourgeois elementary school will be present to the greatest extent – what is taught in schools distorts minds and alienates them from life. And you have to get out of all that stuff, you really have to stand on your own two feet in the spiritual life if you want to get out of this education. But you see, it is through this education that the great and small proletarian leaders have become. They had to acquire it through this education; this education is in our schools and in popular writings, it is everywhere. And then you start to get a dried-up brain, no longer accessible to facts. Instead, you stop at party programs and opinions that you have grafted and hammered into yourself. Then even the world revolution can come, you always whistle the old programs at it.

You see, this is essentially what the book “The Essentials of the Social Question” and the lectures intended in many respects. For once, real account was taken of what the proletariat absolutely needs today, what is necessary in the present situation. This was understood at the beginning, but then it was not understood by those who are the leaders of the proletariat in the various party groupings. That is, I do not want to be too unjust, and I do not want to press the truth; I do not want to claim, for example, that these leaders do not understand this book; because I cannot assume that they have read it, that they know it. I would not claim something correct if I said: they cannot understand the book. But they cannot bring themselves to understand that something else should be necessary than what they have been thinking for decades. Their brains have become too dry and too rigid for that. And so they stop at what they have thought for a long time and find that what is the opposite of all utopia is that utopia. For you see, the book fully anticipates that today one can no longer operate in utopia in the sense of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon and so on; but also that one can never again take the standpoint: development will happen by itself. For what Marx and Engels saw, what developed, and from which they drew their conclusions, cannot be drawn from today, because the world war has swept it away in its true form, it is no longer there. Anyone who says the same thing today as Marx and Engels says something that Marx would never have said, because he has become afraid of his followers: As far as I am concerned, I am not a Marxist. — And today he would say: At that time the facts were still different; I drew my conclusions from facts that had not yet been modified and changed as much as the world war has changed everything.

But you see, those people who cannot learn from events, who today are of an attitude as the old Catholics were towards their bishops and popes, they cannot even imagine that something like that must also be further developed in the sense of the facts, as Marxism is. Therefore, the facts are taking place, and people are still whistling and hissing the same things that they whistled and hissed before the world war. The bourgeois do it, but so do the socialists. The broadest circles do it. The bourgeoisie do it, of course, quite sleepily, with completely sleepy souls; the others do it in such a way that they are indeed in the thick of it and see the collapse, but they do not want to reckon with the facts that it reveals. We simply have to have something new among people today. And that is why it is necessary to understand something that is not utopian, but that actually takes the facts into account. If those who are so concerned with the facts call it a cross-current, then one could actually be quite satisfied. Because if people go straight ahead with what they are doing, if they call it a straight line, then, in order to do something sensible, you have to shoot in a cross-current to take the sensible thing in a different direction.

But you see, those who do see the rational should delve into what is presented here. And these evenings can be used for that.

What has been derived from the facts has long been tried in practice, and so we have been meeting for weeks – I do not need to repeat all these things, you can still ask questions or discuss the pros and cons after this lecture – to get what we call the works council up and running. We have tried to create this council out of the facts that are currently necessary, to create it in such a way that it comes from the economic sphere, and not from the political sphere, which cannot provide the basis for economic life. For if we look the facts in the eye today, we have to stand firmly on the ground that is represented here as that of the threefold social organism. And anyone who does not want this threefold structure today is acting against the historical necessity of human development. Today, as I have often explained, the spiritual life must be placed on its own, the economic life on its own, and the legal or political life must be administered democratically. And in the economic life, the first step towards a truly social organization is to be taken with works councils. But how can this be done? Only by first asking the question: Well, there is the impulse of the threefold social organism, which is new compared to all previous party mummies; is there anything else? Today, fools claim that ideas are just buzzing through the air. If you listen to the discussions, they bring up all sorts of negative things, but they don't bring up anything that could be compared to the threefold order of the social organism. What comes from the socialist side is all wishy-washy. As was said in a newly founded magazine in a review of the threefold order, ideas are just hanging in the air. The point is, first of all, to raise this question and be clear about it: is there nothing else? Then one adheres to the threefold social order until one can refute it in an objective way, so that one can put something objectively equivalent alongside.

The old party programs can no longer be discussed; the world war has discussed them. Those who really understand know that these old party mummies have been refuted by the world war catastrophe. But then, if one cannot answer this question by putting something else alongside it, then one can honestly say to oneself, if one wants to go further: So let us work in the sense of the threefold order of the social organism. Let us be honest: the old party contexts have lost their meaning. We must work in terms of threefolding. When I spoke in Mannheim the day before yesterday, a gentleman came forward at the end and said: What Steiner said is nice, but it is not what we want. We do not want a new party in addition to all the old parties. The people who want that should join the old parties and work within them. I could only say in response: I have been following political life very closely for a long time, when the gentleman who spoke was far from being born. And although I have become acquainted with everything that has somehow functioned as a social force throughout my life, I have never been able to work within any party or be a member of one, and it does not occur to me, now at the end of my sixth decade, to somehow become a party person. I do not want to have anything to do with any party, not even one I founded myself. No one need fear that a new party will be founded by me, because I have learned that every party becomes foolish after some time through the necessities of nature, precisely because I have never got involved with any party. And I have learned to regret the people who do not see through this. Therefore, no one need fear that a new party will be added to the old ones. That is why a new party has not been founded either, but the Federation for the Threefold Social Organism has come together to represent the ideas of the threefold organism – the non-utopian but realistic nature of which is, after all, understood by a number of people. But those people who understand this should also honestly and sincerely profess it.

For this must not happen either: there is a play in which a cock crows in the morning, and every time the cock crows, the sun rises. Now, the cock cannot see the connection at once, so it believes that when it crows, the sun follows its call, coming because it has crowed, it has caused the sun to rise. If someone in a non-social life, like this cockerel crowing on the dung heap and wanting to make the sun rise, finally succumbs to such a delusion, it does not matter. But if, under certain circumstances, the idea of the works councils, which are truly economic on the basis of the threefold social order, were to flourish here and those people who cultivate it because the impulse of the threefold organism has brought this idea into fl but then wanted to deny the origin and believe because it was said that the works councils would come, that would be the same error, and a very disastrous one. But that must not happen. What is happening in this direction, what has been tackled here, must not be detached; it must remain in the context of the correctly understood impulse of the threefold social order.

Those who want to realize the works council in the sense of this impulse can never allow themselves to be drawn into the one-sided idea that only the works council would be founded and that there would always be crowing about “works councils, works councils”. That is not enough. It only makes sense if, at the same time, one strives for everything that is to be achieved through the impulse of the tripartite social organism. That is what matters. Because if you really want to understand what is in this book, then you have to take the point of view that can be learned from the facts that the last four to five years have offered. If you see through these facts, they will have the same effect on you as if you had lived through centuries, and the party programs will have the same effect on you as if their supporters had slept for centuries. Today this must be clearly and unreservedly faced.

What I have told you now, I could just as easily have written as a preface to this book. But in the last few months we have seen how rigid and unfruitful the party programs currently are. But it would be useful if that were the preface to this book. Much of what is not in it, I have told you today, because you have, it seems to me, decided to come together here to study the serious social issues of the present day in a proper way, taking up where this book leaves off. But before doing so, it must be clearly understood that we cannot continue in the old style of party programs and party patterns, but that we must decide to approach the facts realistically today and put an end to everything that does not take into account these new facts. Only in this way will you grasp in the right way what is to be achieved with this impulse of the threefold social organism. And you will grasp it in the right way when you find that every sentence is designed to be put into action, to be transformed into immediate reality. And most of those who say they do not understand it or that it is utopian and the like, they simply lack the courage to think so strongly today that their thoughts can intervene in reality. Those who always crow: “dictatorship of the proletariat, conquest of power, socialism,” they usually think little of it. Therefore, reality cannot be intervened with these word templates. But then they come and say that something is being offered that is utopian. A utopia only comes into being in the minds of people who understand nothing about it. Therefore, one should make clear to these people, in a somewhat modified form, what Goethe once said with reference to something else, laughing at the physiologist Haller, who was an ossified naturalist.

Haller had coined the phrase:

No creative spirit
No creative spirit can penetrate.
Happy the man to whom she
The outer shell!

Goethe resisted this, saying:

Into the heart of nature.
Oh, you philistines!
No created spirit can penetrate
---
Happy the man to whom she The outer shell!
I have heard this repeated for sixty years;
I curse it, but furtively,
---
Nature has neither core
nor shell,
All at once it is everything.
Just test yourself most of all
Whether you are the kernel or the shell.

To those who speak of the threefold social organism as a utopia, one would also like to say: Examine yourself most of all to see whether what haunts your brain is utopia or reality. You will find that all the crowers mostly have utopias in them and that is why the reality in their own heads also becomes a utopia or an ideology, or whatever they call it. That is why it is so difficult to get through with reality today, because people have blocked their access to reality so much.

But we have to realize that we have to work seriously, otherwise we will not be able to translate our will into action. And it is essential that we translate our will into action. And if we had to say goodbye to everything because we recognize it as an error, then, in order to be able to move from will to action, we would have to turn to the truth, which we want to see through as such. Because nothing else can lead from volition to action but the ruthless, courageous pursuit of truth. This should actually be written as a motto, as a motto, in front of the studies of this evening.

I wanted to give you a preface to these study evenings tonight. I hope that this preface will not deter you from attending these study evenings so that, before it is too late, thoughts that contain the seeds of action can be fruitfully introduced into the world. The book “The Essentials of the Social Question” is written in a special way in two directions. Firstly, it is written in such a way that it is actually based entirely on reality. This is something that some people do not consider when reading the book. I can also understand that it is not fully considered today. I have already spoken here in this circle, but not everyone who was there today was present, about how people really think today. I referred in particular to the example of the professor of economics, Lujo Brentano, who delivered it so nicely in the previous issue of the “Yellow Sheet”. — I will briefly repeat it because I want to tie something to it. This luminary of today's economics at the university – he is, so to speak, the first – has developed the concept of the entrepreneur and has tried to characterize the features of the entrepreneur based on his enlightened thinking. Well, I don't need to list the first and second features; as a third feature, he states that the entrepreneur is the one who puts his means of production at his own risk and expense in the service of the social order. Now he has this concept of the entrepreneur, and he applies it. He comes to the strange conclusion that the proletarian worker of today is actually also an entrepreneur, because he corresponds to this concept of the entrepreneur in terms of the first, second and third characteristics. This is because the worker has his own labor power as a means of production, and he has control over it. In relation to this, he turns to the social process at his own risk and expense. Thus this luminary of political economy very aptly incorporates the concept of the proletarian laborer into his concept of the entrepreneur. You see, that is precisely how people who form concepts think, who have no sense at all when it comes to demanding that concepts should be truly applicable to reality. But however little you may be inclined to accept this today, it is safe to say that well over ninety percent of everything that is taught or printed today operates with such concepts. If you want to apply them to reality, it is just as impossible as with Lujo Brentano's concept of the entrepreneur. This is the case in science, in social science, everywhere. That is why people have forgotten how to understand anything that works with realistic concepts.

Take the basis of the threefold social order. No, you can't lay these foundations in the most diverse ways, because life needs many foundations. But one thing is clear: in modern times, what might be called the impulse of democracy has emerged. Democracy must consist of every person who has come of age being able to establish their legal relationship, directly or indirectly, with every other person who has come of age in democratic parliaments. But if we honestly and sincerely want to bring this democracy into the world, then we cannot manage spiritual matters in the sense of this democracy, because then every person who has come of age would have to decide on matters they do not understand. Spiritual matters must be regulated on the basis of understanding. This means that they must be left to their own devices. They cannot be administered at all in a democratic parliament, but must have their own administration, which cannot be democratic, but must be based on the matter itself. The same applies to economic life. Here, too, economic experience and inner life must be the basis for administration. Therefore, economic life, on the one hand, and spiritual life, on the other, must be excluded from the democratic parliament. Thus arises the threefolded social organism.

In Tübingen, as I have already mentioned, there is Professor Heck, who said that there is absolutely no need to admit that there is something degrading for the proletarian in the normal wage relationship, where one is paid for one's work, because Caruso is also in a wage relationship and there is no difference in principle. Caruso sings and gets paid, and the ordinary proletarian works and also gets paid; and he, as a professor, also gets paid when he lectures. The only difference between Caruso and the proletarian is that Caruso gets thirty to forty thousand marks for one evening and the proletarian gets a little less. But that is not a fundamental difference, only a difference in the amount of the wage. And so, this witty professor says, there is absolutely no reason to feel that the wage is degrading. He does not feel that way either. — That is just by the way. But now this clever professor has also written a long article against the threefold social order. He starts from the premise that if we organize in three, then we will end up with three parliaments. And now he shows that this does not work with three parliaments. Because he says: In the economic parliament, the small craftsman will not understand the points of view of the big industrialist and so on. — There the good professor has formed his ideas about the threefold order, and he attacks these ideas, which I find much more stupid than Professor Heck finds them — I would also criticize them to the ground —, but he has made them himself. The point is not to have three parliaments running alongside each other, but to take out what does not belong in any parliament. He makes three parliaments and says: That does not work. — So one lives in unrealistic terms and judges the rest accordingly.

Now, almost the only thing that has been introduced into political economy, into economics, are unreal concepts. But you see, I couldn't write a whole library listing all the economic terms at a time when time is of the essence. Therefore, of course, this book contains a multitude of terms that need to be discussed appropriately. For example, I need only draw attention to the following:

In a time that we have outgrown, social conditions arose basically only through conquest. Some territory was occupied by one people or race; another people burst in and conquered the area. Those races or peoples who were there earlier were pushed down to do the work. The conquering people took possession of the land, and that is how a certain relationship between conquerors and conquered arose. The conquerors had possession of the land because they were conquerors. Thus they were the economically strong, the conquered were the economically weak. This is how what became a legal relationship developed. Therefore, in almost all older epochs in historical development, legal relationships based on conquest were established, that is to say, privileges and rights of disadvantage. Now the times came when conquests could not be made freely. You can study the difference in free and bound conquest. If you look, for example, at the early Middle Ages, how certain peoples, the Goths, had pushed over to the south, but into fully occupied areas, they were led to do different things in terms of the social order than when the Franks moved to the west and did not find fully occupied areas there. This resulted in different conqueror rights. In more recent times, not only the rights arising from conquests and dependent on land and soil have been in force; the rights of people who had property have been added to these, and who, through economic power, were now able to appropriate the means of production. To what is meant by land law in the modern sense was added the ownership of the means of production, that is, the private ownership of capital. This then gave rise to legal relationships based on economic relationships. You see, the legal relationships arose entirely from the economic relationships.

Now people come along and want to have the concepts of economic power, of the economic significance of land, they want to have the concepts of operating resources, of means of production, of capitals, and so on. Yes, but they have no real insight into the way things work. They take the superficial facts and do not realize what is actually behind the land rights, behind the power relations in relation to the means of production. All these things are, of course, taken into account in my book. That is the right way of thinking. When the word “rights” is used, it is used out of an awareness of how rights have developed over the centuries; when the word “capital” is used, it is used out of an awareness of how capital has come about. Care is taken to avoid using a term that is not fully understood in terms of its origin. That is why these terms are used differently than in the usual textbooks today. But something else is also taken into account.

Let us take a specific fact. It is true that Protestantism arose at some point. In history books, it is often told that Tetzel went around Central Europe and that people were outraged by the sale of indulgences and the like. But that was not the only reason; that is only the surface view. The main thing behind it was the fact that there was a banking house in Genoa, on behalf of which, not on behalf of the Pope, this seller of indulgences went around in Germany, because this banking house had granted the Pope a loan for his other needs. The whole story was a capitalist enterprise. In this example of a capitalist undertaking of the sale of indulgences, where even spiritual things were traded, you can study, or rather, when you start to study, you gradually come to the conclusion that ultimately all capital power goes back to the superiority of the spiritual. And so it is. Study how capital actually came to its power, and you will find the superiority of the spiritual everywhere. It is true that the clever and resourceful have more power than those who are not clever or resourceful. And in this way, much of the accumulation of capital comes about justifiably, but also unjustifiably. This must be taken into account when considering the concept of capital. From such real studies one comes to understand that capital is based on the development of spiritual power, and that to the land rights, to the rights of the conquerors, from another side has been added the power of the old theocratic spirit. Much of what was then transferred to modern capitalism originated from the old church. There is a secret connection between modern capitalist power and the power of the old church. And all this has become mixed up in the modern power state. In it you find the remnants of the old theocracy, the remnants of the old conquests. And finally the modern conquests were added, and the most modern conquest is now supposed to be the conquest of the state by socialism. But in reality it must not be done that way. Something new must be created that completely does away with these old concepts and impulses. Therefore, it will be important that in these studies we also deal with the concepts that underlie them. Today, anyone who wants to talk about social issues must give us a precise explanation of what is right, what is power, and what is actually a good, a good in the form of goods and the like. It is in this area that the greatest mistakes are made. I will point out one mistake, for example. If you do not pay attention to it, you will misunderstand much of my book.

Today, there is a widespread belief that goods are stored labor, that capital is also stored labor. — You may say that it is harmless to have such concepts. It is not harmless, because such concepts poison all social thinking. — What exactly is the situation with labor, labor as the expenditure of labor power? Yes, it is the case that there is a big difference between, for example, wearing out my physical muscle strength by doing sports and chopping wood. When I do sports, I wear out my physical muscle strength, and I can get just as tired and need to replace my muscle strength as someone who chops wood. I can apply the same amount of work to sports as to chopping wood. The difference is not that it has to be replaced; labor power must naturally be replaced, but the difference is that the one labor power is used only for me, in the selfish sense, the other in the social sense for society. It is the social function that distinguishes these things. If I say that something is stored-up labor, I do not take into account that labor actually ceases to be in something the moment work is no longer done. I cannot say that capital is stored-up labor, but rather that labor is only there as long as it is being performed.

But in our present social order, capital retains the power to summon labor again at any time. The disastrous thing is not in what Marx means, that capital is accumulated labor, but in the institution that capital gives the power to summon new labor, not accumulated labor, but new labor always again into its service. Much depends on this. Much depends on this, that clear concepts based on reality are developed. And this book of mine is based on such concepts, which are now fully embedded in reality. It does not rely on such concepts, which were quite useful for the education of the proletariat. Today, when we are supposed to build something, these concepts no longer make sense.

You see, when I say: capital is accumulated labor - that is good for the education of the proletariat. It got the feelings it was supposed to get. It didn't matter that the concept was fundamentally wrong. You can educate with fundamentally wrong concepts. But you can only build something with the right concepts. Therefore, we need correct concepts in all areas of the economy today and cannot continue to work with false concepts. I am not saying this out of frivolity, that you can also educate with false concepts, but rather out of general educational principles. When you tell fairy tales to children, you do not want to build something with the ideas that you develop. In education, something else comes into consideration than in the construction of physical reality. There one must work with real concepts. Something like: “Capital is stored labor,” that is not a concept. Capital is power and gives power to put newly emerging labor into its service. That is a real concept with factual logic. One must work with true concepts in these areas. That is attempted with these things. Therefore, I believe that much of what is not in there in terms of definitions of the terms, in terms of characterization of the terms, must be worked out. And anyone who can then contribute to the work of understanding what is needed to understand the way of thinking, the basis of this book, will make a very good contribution to these study evenings.

So it is particularly important that what — well, it wouldn't be true to say that you would have to write an encyclopedia if you wanted to clarify all the terms — but what is now “capital” can be done on such a study evening. Because without a clear understanding today of what capital actually is, what a commodity is, what labor is, what law is—without these concepts we will make no headway. And these concepts are completely confused in the broadest circles; above all, they must be set straight.

In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner indicates the magnitude of the questions at stake and suggests that a mechanisation of the spirit, vegetation of the soul, and animalisation of the body will take place unless humanity is able to find a new relationship to the spirit. It is lecture 13 of 14 from the lecture series: Reorganization of the Social Organism.

Every individual has the feeling that part of his being is super-sensible, whatever function it has within his soul. And anthroposophical spiritual science—the name applying to what I have been presenting for many years—has something it wants to say about this feeling becoming an inner scientific certainty in the consciousness of present-day mankind. However, there are still all manner of prejudices against the anthroposophical approach to knowledge of man's super-sensible being and to knowledge of the super-sensible world altogether. But anthroposophy cannot speak about the super-sensible being of man in the kind of way people would still like to hear it spoken of in many circles today. For we should imagine, in fact, we should be certain that speaking about it in that way would not satisfy people's present-day aspirations for knowledge, which are none the less intense although they may still be unconscious. Nowadays when people pass judgment on one or another aspect of anthroposophy you constantly hear the remark that anthroposophy is difficult to understand. They say that anthroposophy obtains its knowledge from regions one does not need to go to in order to reach the super-sensible. They emphasise the difference between anthroposophy's search for knowledge and ‘simple faith’ based on the creed and the Bible, and they keep on stressing that anyone who has found the inner strength of this ‘simple faith’ does not need anthroposophical spiritual science.

If anthroposophy were to speak along the lines that people nowadays call ‘simple faith,’ it would certainly consider it was failing to do justice to the deepest aspirations of the times. It would have to admit, in that case, that although it was presenting a point of view still popular with many people who find it less difficult to understand than anthroposophy, this point of view is nevertheless no longer appropriate for the real soul needs of present-day mankind. I wanted this to be said because it is just from this direction that objections are continually being raised against the views which arise from a valid consideration of man's present-day needs, views which are held by the kind of spiritual science that will be spoken of here. This kind of spiritual science is convinced that certain inter-relationships exist about which many people nowadays have the most detrimental illusions. Today, however, we are living in an age that has a long way to go before confusion and chaos are over. We are entering a difficult period of human evolution. Anyone able to look more deeply into the evolution of mankind and seeing the amount of elemental unrest felt today throughout the whole of the civilised world, of which everything of the nature of inner tensions is only the ripples on the surface, knows that this has a mysterious connection with that obstinate attitude of ‘simple faith’ that wants to rely solely on the creed and the Bible. The parts of man's being that are attracted by this so-called ‘faith’ shut him off from those very forces that could bring order into chaos and confusion at the present stage of human evolution. If those people who speak in the way I have indicated would now deepen their knowledge somewhat, they would have to see all that is bringing mankind into such terrible conflict and chaos. Then they would have to admit that they now lack certain forces that they failed to develop because of their determination not to go beyond their so-called ‘simple faith,’ which they and others find so convenient. They would also have to admit that there is an inner relationship between the unrest of today and this harping on ‘simple faith.’ A causal connection there certainly is, today's elemental restlessness being the result of this obdurate harping.

I am not speaking out of subjective feelings but out of the very kind of knowledge I would like to tell you more about today, namely an inner scientific perception. It is this that has moved anthroposophy to bring knowledge of the super-sensible down from spirit heights. Insofar as the so-called believers in a simple faith point to the super-sensible, their knowledge has also come to them from spirit heights. But they have no wish at all to ascend to these heights.

This had to be said first of all, because today, in particular, what I will have to say concerning the super-sensible being of man will need to be brought into connection with a number of those spiritual scientific facts that people on the one hand find really incomprehensible—though if they were to go into them more thoroughly they would find they absolutely accorded with common sense; and that people on the other hand consider unnecessary, because they do not find they accord with the ‘simple faith’ they think they ought to advocate. I attempted the day before yesterday to characterise the paths by which the kind of spiritual science we mean attains to knowledge. On that occasion I began by saying that on the whole men of present times have very little desire to know about what is taking place unconsciously in the depths of their being. On the one hand people think the body is something external to themselves, and that they can gain knowledge of it either by observing it with sense perception or by considering it according to the outlook laid down by natural science. On the other hand they think that their thinking, sense perception, feeling and willing comprise the whole of their inner being. However, the path of knowledge I indicated the day before yesterday shows that the life of the external body, on the one hand, and the soul experiences of thinking, feeling and willing we have in ordinary consciousness, on the other, do not comprise the whole of man's being. The essential point is that man as spiritual investigator does not stop at the level of ordinary consciousness but takes the development of his soul into his own hands, as it were. In the realm of thought, in particular, he raises thinking consciously onto a higher level than in ordinary life, and in the other direction makes his will nature consciously into an object of self-education. Thus the development of soul forces beyond the level of ordinary life is the only thing that can lead in an anthroposophical sense to knowledge of the super-sensible world.

Now what is this development of thinking? It consists of making human thinking or human visualising stronger than it is in ordinary life, and doing so in a completely systematic way based on the experiences of man's inner soul nature. In ordinary life our thinking or visualising is merely a spectator. And man is conscious of the fact that he actually thinks best in ordinary life when he allows his experiences of life or of external nature to work on him in such a way that he forms his mental pictures as a passive spectator. With the methods described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds you can bring activity into the world of thought. You will bring such activity into the world of thought that you will be conscious that you are not passive whilst you think, but are as active as you are when you use your limbs, even though this is an inner activity. Will must be brought into thinking, the kind of will, however, that does not make the thinking arbitrary, but adapts it to the phenomena of the world. So it is a particularly good preparation for the spiritual investigator if he precedes his spiritual scientific endeavours with a thoroughly disciplined study in the natural scientific method, thus training himself not to think arbitrarily but according to the phenomena of nature itself. But he also has to free himself from this mere looking at nature. His newly acquired capacity of systematic thinking and of observing natural phenomena must now be developed as a thought activity independent of physical phenomena. A spiritual scientific training of thinking is an activating of thinking. This is a fact that many people still disbelieve today—we are only at the beginning of spiritual scientific knowledge—namely the fact that man's thinking and whole activity of mental picturing really takes on quite a different character than it has in everyday life.

If we think back to the dreamlike mental images of early childhood and compare these with the clear thinking of adulthood, we find that man's inner life of soul has undergone a change. A similar change takes place in anyone who develops his thinking in the way we have described and progresses from ordinary thinking to active thinking. He feels as though he has awakened from the normal condition of existence, and, provided we do not use the word in a dubious mystical sense, we can certainly say that this activated thinking ‘awakens’ man.

By learning to use this active thinking man acquires an entirely new way of ‘seeing’ things, a new way of seeing the qualities of the human body, to begin with. Active thinking ascends to the kind of seeing in which the human body appears in quite a new way. Above all, a tremendous difference is to be seen between the form of man's head organisation and the organisation that comes to expression in man's mobile limbs and everything that is connected with these. By means of the kind of seeing that active thinking opens up we come to realise that the human head is of an entirely different character, even in its bodily nature, from the rest of the body, particularly the limb organisation. Inner perception shows us how thinking, especially this activated thinking, is related to the whole nature of the human head. We learn to know in a new way what the human body really is. For as our soul development progresses by means of this active thinking there enters consciously into this active thinking the kind of life experience that is not solely of the type that enters ordinary thinking or visualising.

Life experiences that enter ordinary thinking or visualising have a certain peculiarity. We experience the world within this ordinary visualising. We experience it through our sense perceptions and the thoughts that come to meet them. But we keep a bit of this experience back for ourselves, too. We would not have our whole human nature within ourselves if each external impression did not leave behind it the possibility of our remembering it. It is just this memory that keeps our whole human personality intact, and we only have to think of the devastation wrought in the human personality by any kind of loss of memory to realise what the power of memory means for the cohesion of the human personality in ordinary life. But the force that enables us to keep memories alive, those memories acquired by opening ourselves to the outer world and forming mental images of it via our sense perception, this force remains unconscious. This is something that man carries out unconsciously. But when it comes to the experiences of active, super-sensible thinking, it is different. It would be quite impossible to bring what is acquired in a really super-sensible way, through active thinking, into any sort of connection with the human personality if we were dependent on the activity that works unconsciously within us. Something we have to learn about the acquisition of super-sensible knowledge is that we are not taking something unconsciously into the body by means of which we can later on awake a memory, on the contrary the imprinting of something in the physical body, the taking in of it, that normally takes place as an unconscious activity and works on as memory, has to be carried out consciously by the spiritual investigator. The higher, super-sensible experience gained by activated thinking would never come in place of an absolutely dreamy experience if we could not acquire the capacity to introduce this super-sensible experience to the body consciously.

We can only introduce it, however, to the head organisation. But then this head organisation teaches us something that eludes ordinary science, but which sheds great light on the mystery of man's being. We discover that when we make a conscious imprint of what we experience in active thinking we are constantly bringing about a process in the human head that is not an intensification of life but a breaking down of life, a partial dying. This is a significant and moving experience acquired through spiritual science: In order to remember super-sensible knowledge, we have to imprint it into our head organisation, and it is immediately evident that this imprinting does not bring about an enlivening process but a process of partial dying, a breaking down of the head organisation's life processes. This teaches us how the bodily head organisation actually functions in man. We discover something that is normally not known because it remains unconscious, namely that our whole thinking activity or mental imagery is not something that comes from forces of life, as materialists believe, but something that comes from the damping down of the life of the head. It arises because whilst our soul is active our head is constantly in a state of partial dying. We also discover a fact that strikes a man of today as being absurd: if the thinking activity of the head were to spread into the rest of man's body, he would immediately die.

Thus spiritual science teaches us that the death-bringing principle is constantly at work in part of man's bodily nature. We learn that because our head is organised that way, death is at work in us throughout our life. You see, this approach, that people in many circles today imagine has nothing useful to offer, leads to the kind of conceptions that completely contradict the usual views. We find that this imprinting that I have just described as a conscious process which must be carried out by active thinking, cannot actually directly imprint into man's physical organisation the super-sensible world where the experiences have been undergone. We find out the real fact that eludes external sense observation. We discover that incorporated into the ordinary life of the senses is what I took the liberty, in my books on spiritual science, to call the etheric body or body of formative forces. We discover a delicate body of light between the activity of active thinking and man's physical body, particularly in the head organisation. This finer body is the formative force—a thing that modern natural science makes fun of—underlying the physical body, and it is discovered in this way by super-sensible sight, which at this stage we can call an Imagination. We discover a higher, super-sensible member of man's being. At this point we experience an extraordinarily shattering phenomenon. When we imprint our super-sensible experiences into our etheric body and on into our physical body, we feel as though we were no longer master of our ego. We thought our ego filled our soul being through and through, but now it feels as though it were being sucked into the body.

The way to overcome this phenomenon is to have other soul exercises going parallel with the activating of thinking. These outer exercises are to do with disciplining the will. Although I characterised them the day before yesterday, I want to refer to them again briefly. I described how man changes from one week to the next, from one hour to the next, from one year to the next. We know we are becoming a different person. Our experiences are not the kind of thing we have, but the kind of thing that is perpetually making us into a different person. But nowadays an unconscious activity is also at work here. Present-day man gives himself up to external experiences. If he goes so far as to observe his inner being to any extent, he may notice that on the whole he is becoming a different person from week to week, year to year, and decade to decade; that his soul constitution is changing. But he does not take this development of his soul constitution in hand. This, however, the spiritual investigator has to do. He has to work on himself in such a way that his own will controls the progress he makes from one year to the next and from one decade to the next, and this also has to be systematic. He has to practise self-discipline and self-education systematically and fully consciously, not merely arbitrarily or according to the pattern of ordinary more or less unconscious existence. He has to bring under the control of his own will what otherwise takes place in us involuntarily.

This calls forth another experience of a kind that is very far removed from present-day consciousness; we realise that we have to put aside a scientific prejudice that prevails nowadays in a particular realm of science and has taken general hold of people's minds. This scientific view—which I want to mention because it could be the very thing that might make my present argument intelligible—is that man has two kinds of nerves: the so-called sensory nerves and the motor nerves. The sensory nerves run from our sense organs (so people believe) or from the surface of the skin to the nerve centre and convey perceptions in the same way as telegraph wires. The so-called motor nerves, the will nerves, go out from the nerve centre. A kind of demonic being is imagined as residing in the central nervous system, although of course present-day science will not admit this, and he is supposed to change what comes in through the telegraph wire nerves from the senses to the telegraph exchange into will through the motor nerves, the will nerves. People have thought out such beautiful theories that are really extremely clever, especially those derived from the terrible illness tabes, to explain this theory of the two kinds of nerves. Nevertheless this theory is nothing else than the result of a lack of knowledge of super-sensible man. It would lead too far for me to go into it now—although tabes proves it if we observe it correctly—but there is no difference between the sensory and the motor nerves. The same as with the so-called sensory nerves, the function of which is to convey external perceptions, the only function of the so-called motor nerves is to convey internal perceptions when we walk or move our arms. The motor nerves are sensory nerves too, only their function is to perceive our movements.

The reason why people believe the motor nerves to be the bearer of the will is only because they have no idea what is the real bearer of the will. We only discover what this is when we really practise the kind of self-discipline of the will I was speaking about: become actively engaged in self-education and become at the same time independent of what the body does with us, so to speak. Then we discover that it is not the motor nerves that create will, for they only perceive its movements, but that it is created by a third member of man's being, a super-sensible member that we could actually call the soul. I have called it the astral body in my books, though people do not like the term yet. Again it is by means of direct vision, acquired through this self-disciplining of the will, that we get to know this super-sensible member of man's being; and we discover that it is this ‘soul body,’ if I may call it that, that is the soul and spirit entity underlying all the bodily movements arising out of will. Nerves are there only to convey the perception of movement. If we take this disciplining of the will to further stages, however, we must then ascend from the level of imaginative knowledge, to which I have just referred, to those of Inspiration and Intuition, as I call them in the book just mentioned. We then discover this soul body to be a higher member of man's being than the etheric body or body of formative forces. We find, however, that we cannot experience this soul body in ourselves but only when we are outwardly active and when we become conscious of our will impulses.

When we have reached the point where we discover this actual soul body in ourselves, this second super-sensible part of man's being, the will, grows stronger and stronger, and we recognise it as our sentient body, as the force that works into our limbs and sets our body in motion, as an organisation totally different from our head organisation. In contrast to this head organisation, which I characterised as being constantly in the state of partial dying, we discover that this organisation is constantly in the process of spiritual birth, in which life is increasing and developing all the time. Thus through the head organisation on the one hand, we experience a perpetual dying, and in the will organisation, the second super-sensible member of man's being, we experience a perpetual continuation of the birth process. Out of this continuation of the birth process, out of this increase of life which has to come out of our whole being, there then rays back to us the true, super-sensible nature of our ego, and enters into what we have imprinted into our body. Our ego arises again and again out of the grave of our partially dying head. This perpetual interplay of dying and being born is what we experience within ourselves when we develop our soul life in this way. So we discover that birth and death take place not only at the beginning and end of our lives but that dying and becoming are the expression of forces working in our organisation throughout our lives.

Only when we have thus encountered man's super-sensible forces through Intuition and Inspiration are we in a position to recognise the evolutionary path of mankind; for in developing this kind of vision, the forces we acquire from our head organisation and the organisation of the rest of our body combine to illuminate for us the inner forces at work in the historical development of mankind. How does historical development appear, as a rule, to the ordinary consciousness of present times? If we ignore what men believed in early stages of human evolution out of a primitive conception of mankind and which is now considered childish, namely that there is spirit working in history; if we ignore this, we can say that people nowadays regard history, or rather the evolution of mankind, as a collection of facts gleaned from documents, archives and tradition which, at the most, they link together with the intellect. Not until we perceive the super-sensible being of man, as I have just described it, does the ability to see the progression of higher super-sensible beings through the course of history associate itself with the historical facts which even a spiritual investigator has to take from external history. He gets to know human evolution from the inside, whereas it is usually only looked at from the outside.

So as not just to talk round the subject in the abstract, I will speak of one fact in particular, to show you the evolution of human history from the point of view of symptoms. As man's outlook is restricted solely to the material world, what is presented as history today is just an external picture, and is largely a fable convenue. Anyone who is able to look with inner vision at the connecting link between the facts, discovers that the first thing he sees on looking backwards into our historical evolution is, strange to say, a nodal point in the evolution of modern humanity around the middle of the fifteenth century. We see in a number of spheres something like a forward leap taking place in human development. We know of course that leaps like this take place in nature, too. If we look at the evolving plant, and see first the green leaves developing, then the calyx, and then the transformation into petals, we see a leap from the green leaf to the coloured petal, even though there is a steady development. There is a similar leap in the evolution of humanity in the middle of the fifteenth century, only it passes unnoticed when historical facts are looked at solely from the outside. Something then begins to make itself felt in human evolution that lifts men's souls onto quite a different level of development from the one preceding it. Earlier epochs of human evolution, it is true, also attained considerable heights from time to time, but human souls were quite differently constituted before and after the middle of the fifteenth century. Looking at history from the inside, the middle of the fifteenth century was the end of an epoch of human evolution that actually began in the eighth century B.C., roughly with the founding of the Roman Empire.

Anyone observing history from a spiritual scientific point of view sees a continuous line of development running through the centuries from 800 B.C. until the middle of the fifteenth century A.D. And anyone looking from inside at the Greek or the Roman era will find what is said here thoroughly substantiated. The kind of soul constitution that was developing in man during that epoch was of a kind that nurtured feeling (Gemüt) and intelligence. The surprising thing is that when observing history from the inside, we find that prior to the eighth century B.C. the power of feeling and intelligence was not yet actively at work in the human soul. In those days man was still to a great extent united with nature; he did not step back and reflect on the things he had seen, for his life of feeling was still a part of nature. Not until the eighth century did he free himself from nature and develop forces of intelligence and feeling independently within himself. By and large the whole of historical development from the eighth century B.C. to the fourteenth century A.D. is a gradual unfolding of those particular forces of soul in mankind that produce a flowering of the qualities of feeling and intelligence from out of man's inner being.

This development of the forces of feeling and intelligence, however, still had an instinctive quality about it during this epoch, intelligence and feeling still working in an instinctive way. In the middle of the fifteenth century, however, these forces previously working instinctively in the intelligence and feeling took on a fully conscious quality. Men felt more strongly isolated from outer nature than they had felt before, because in order to think about things consciously and experience their instinctive feelings of sympathy and antipathy consciously, they had to draw back from external nature, so to speak. Everything became conscious. Therefore we can say, from a spiritual scientific point of view, that whilst in earlier epochs the instinctive life of thought and feeling was being developed, from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards what we can call the consciousness soul has been developing, and this stage of development is something that will continue for a very long period of human evolution. Relatively speaking, we human beings are still at the beginning of this evolution of the consciousness soul, which is already responsible for the great progress made in natural scientific thinking. However great Plato and Aristotle were, they did not possess natural scientific thinking, which requires the kind of withdrawal of man's inner being from nature that did not take place until the consciousness soul appeared in human evolution. Thus our development of natural science is part and parcel of one epoch of human evolution. Lessing described this very beautifully, whichever way you interpret his words, by saying that the whole of human evolution is “a kind of Education of Mankind.” Since the middle of the fifteenth century the education of mankind consists of the education of the consciousness soul, and this it is that has actually brought with it the natural scientific outlook. Looked at from inside this is a section of human evolution.

We only understand fully what belongs to the era from the eighth century B.C. till the middle of the fifteenth century A.D. when we look at it from the inside, from the point of view of man's soul development. For the founding of Christianity falls in the first third of this era, and the spiritual scientist sees this as the greatest event that has ever occurred in earthly evolution. With his ability to look down the centuries from inside at man's soul development, the spiritual scientist recognises better than anyone else that in the first third of the epoch I described as the era of the evolution of intelligence and feeling, something was still present that had existed in the highest degree in the days of early humanity, namely something that made man feel a part of the natural world around him; but in those times this feeling arose out of the subconscious depths of the soul. Then there broke upon human evolution the Event of Golgotha, the nature of which can never be understood if people try to understand it merely out of a material conglomeration of historical facts. There broke in upon human evolution a fructification of man's evolution, in that a super-sensible element united with this evolution from out of cosmic heights, preparing the way for man's being to become conscious and inwardly strong to an ever greater and greater degree.

Initially the Event of Golgotha, the Incarnation of Christ as Man, met with a way of thinking and feeling that was still of an instinctive nature. It took the next two-thirds of this epoch for these forces emanating from the Event of Golgotha to flow into man's more or less unconscious instinctive forces of intelligence and feeling. Then from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards came the conscious soul evolution of man and, with it, the epoch of natural science, when men turned their attention to external processes of natural phenomena. The beginning of this epoch was the time in which the earlier connection with the spirit, with the super-sensible element in the world, tended to withdraw in favour of conscious existence. This spiritual element, which in earlier times man perceived as though by instinct in the very phenomena of the world, now sprang to life in his inner being by virtue of the fact that the Being of Christ had united Himself with human evolution. But this new life within man came at the point in his evolution when, as I said, man was becoming increasingly conscious and therefore increasingly external. Thus it happened that just at the beginning of the age of the consciousness soul, the age of the conscious development of intelligence and feeling, although the Christ Impulse was at work in human souls, men's consciousness was of a kind that made them lose sight of their spiritual and super-sensible being. Therefore it also happened that people had less and less understanding for the Event that had united itself with human evolution in a super-sensible way—the Event of Golgotha. In the nineteenth century there was a climax in this respect. Now the point had been reached when the Event of Golgotha was divested of its super-sensible character even in the eyes of most of the faithful. Even for these the Event of Golgotha was, in the nineteenth century, relegated to the world of external facts, so to speak. Jesus the Christ Bearer became the ‘simple man of Nazareth,’ a person no greater than a somewhat more highly developed human being. And this happened solely because, while they were developing the consciousness soul, men also lost the understanding for the super-sensible element in history. The conception of Jesus as the simple man of Nazareth brought materialism into Christianity. And nowadays there is not only a materialistic science, there is also a widespread materialistic faith.

Now, however, we have come to the time—in this epoch of human evolution that began in the middle of the fifteenth century—when we face the necessity of ascending once more to the spirit. And the path I described to you today and the day before yesterday is the path that coming humanity will have to tread to ascend to the spirit again and to find its way once more to super-sensible knowledge and to the super-sensible phenomena lying behind the sense world and behind external historical facts. It is this which will also lead it to the super-sensible nature of the Event of Golgotha. Then this unique Event will appear as the kind of turning point in the whole evolution of mankind that everybody can understand and accept. With the coming of this new super-sensible knowledge the Event of Golgotha will be divested of all its sectarianism, and, rising above separate denominations, even above the religious differences existing in different parts of the world, an understanding of it will become the general possession of mankind. Then the Mystery of Golgotha will be seen to be the most important super-sensible fact of all human evolution. The narrow view of Christ that prevents people from seeing the true mystery—and which still inhibits a number of denominations, because materialism has even found its way into faith—this narrow point of view will be superseded; people will find a new understanding of this Impulse, which is the greatest and most powerful Impulse in the whole of mankind's evolution.

This should show you that spiritual science does not deprive people of what they believe to be the results of ‘simple faith.’ On the contrary, spiritual science reaches up to the highest level of knowledge in order to show mankind the greatest Event of human evolution. This is something modern man longs for if he is honest enough with himself and admits that he is more and more disenchanted with ‘simple faith.’ It had to be stated here as belonging to spiritual science. And as we are in the age of consciousness, in which mankind is dividing and becoming disharmonious to an ever greater degree—because the individual is thrown back on his own personality and his personal loneliness—it is essential to point to what men, the whole world over, need to re-unite them once again.

What is needed today is a new understanding of the central Event of human evolution. Spiritual science does not take anything away from man. On the contrary it gives him just what his present-day consciousness needs. And if people, out of their healthy human understanding, want to complain of the views and teachings of anthroposophical spiritual science, we shall have to tell them that their thinking is not healthy enough and that they must throw off the illusions with which the purely external, material theories of natural science have befogged them; they should think about their own thinking, and then they will make a remarkable discovery about the particular nature of man's present-day life of soul. They will hear what natural science tells them from reliable, strictly methodical sources about the evolution of the physical body. But, when their minds are healthy, they will not be able to agree that there is no more to life as they know it than natural science tells them. They will find that when they listen to spiritual science in a really healthy way, and draw comparisons with life, the contradictions arising out of the illusions produced by materialism are enough to make them ill, and that they will only rediscover life if they refer, with the help of spiritual science, to the super-sensible nature of man and the super-sensible world in which the evolution of man and mankind are embedded.

If you have acquired the possibility in this way of seeing historical life supersensibly, the present world epoch, or epoch of human evolution, will appear before you—it is not the right occasion today to include a description of the whole of earthly evolution; you can read that up in my Occult Science and you will be far enough advanced to aspire to the kind of perception Lessing spoke of in his Education of the Human Race, which he had attained out of his much admired healthy human understanding within the German spiritual stream of development. Then you will be capable of perceiving that in the course of spiritual evolution human life runs its course in repeated earth lives. For the whole span of man's life consists of an altenation between the kind of lives he spends in a physical body and another form of existence between death and a new birth, spent in the super-sensible worlds which are connected with our world through the spirit that is also at work in historical evolution. We discover then, as Lessing also did, that in coming back for repeated lives on earth, man himself carries evolution forward from one epoch to the next. This knowledge of repeated earth lives cannot become a theory in the accepted sense, for when you are capable of penetrating into the spirit of human evolution in the way I have described, you can find this knowledge for yourself, but you have then acquired it as a fact of man's higher super-sensible nature.

A new perception of spiritual life, a perception which will help us find the spirit again in our materialistic world, is about to enter present civilisation. The materialistic outlook prevailing today is largely responsible for estranging man's inner life from a real perception of the spirit, and depriving him of the courage to plunge into this spiritual perception, making him believe that the only way to the spirit is the way of ‘simple creed’ based on a literal acceptance of the Bible. This ‘simple creed’ and the materialism of our time are closely related, for before such a thing as materialism existed, there was not this perpetual harping on a simple creed. After all, at the time when Christianity arose, the teachings about Christ Jesus came out of highly developed spiritual vision, though of course it was atavistic. This old spiritual vision cannot be the way of modern man. Modern man must work for spiritual vision in the way I have tried to describe. If you become aware of what is living deep down in people's souls nowadays and colouring their whole outlook, although they are not fully conscious of it—this mood that unconsciously flashes into consciousness, sometimes in a pathological way, so that people feel it as inner unrest, as a psychopathic tendency, even though they cannot explain it—this mood is the striving for a new spirituality. I certainly do not wish to be so immodest as to suggest or maintain that the spiritual science or anthroposophy I give lectures on is the only thing that has to happen on the path to the spirit. What I have given here is just a humble attempt. And anyone who makes a humble attempt like this, yet is aware that it comes out of the deepest longings of the present time, is also aware that there will be more and more people coming along and attempting to tread the paths to spiritual vision and to proclaim the possibility of ascending to life on a super-sensible level.

But you can see too, that when I lecture on anthroposophy I cannot spare anybody's feelings, at the first encounter, that these things are rather difficult to understand. You will also see that what leads to these spiritual worlds is neither a damping down of clear thinking nor a damping down of the will that works in practical life, but is an intensification of both thought and will. Many people of the present day cannot muster sufficient inner courage for this as yet. So they look at anthroposophy and say: They mean well, these people, but with their anthroposophy they tell us all kinds of things about mankind's evolution, even about cosmic facts of a spiritual nature. Looking at anthroposophy from a safe distance, people like this call it ‘crazy stuff’, etc., terms used here recently in Stuttgart, to apply to the world of physical facts. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, people will never get beyond a nonsensical, merely hazy presentiment of the spiritual world if clear, mathematical thinking and a light-irradiated, self-disciplined will are not applied to bring down real facts from the super-sensible world to replace mere phrases. Modern man needs these facts.

I have spoken to you about what mankind is longing for. And it was this very longing that caused such a caricature of super-sensible striving to arise in the nineteenth century. People only know how to strive in a materialistic way. But alongside this materialistic striving they acquired a yearning for the spirit. So they investigated the spirit on the pattern of their research in the material world and carried out a caricature of spiritual research, namely spiritualism, which is nothing else but a material search for something that can never be matter, namely spirit. What comes out in a pathological way in spiritualism as a caricature of spiritual striving, is the same thing that is being sought for by anthroposophical spiritual science, but in the latter case it is healthy and is based on a further development in clear consciousness of forces already inherent in man.

Anthroposophical spiritual science therefore appears, in the best sense of the word, as an attempt (we mean this modestly) to bring perceptions of the spiritual world, super-sensible man and his evolution into the age of great and outstanding perceptions of an external, scientific nature. Not until these scientific perceptions have been supplemented by the perceptions of spiritual vision will modern man understand his being in the way he longs to. Therefore spiritual science as we pursue it must shake off all the reproaches it encounters, even those from well-meaning people.

To conclude I should like to draw your attention to the fact that even the kind of people who have no intention of rejecting spiritual science are offended when we speak to large audiences about ‘spiritual secrets’, as they call them, instead of keeping these in intimate sectarian circles. Oh, they know very well that it is a sacred duty of the times to stand up and speak to large audiences. Therefore I must not pay attention to the kind of reproach that was made recently:—That it is just not done to speak about cosmic things to a large city audience, like Dr. Steiner does. What is needed is a master of the art of divine gesture who can inexorably drive everyone from his presence who does not know when to be silent. What we need is an approach that can distinguish in more than mere words between what is profane and what is holy.—In answer to this reproach we have to say that we have also entered the age of democracy in the spiritual sphere, and that it is a sin against mankind to wish to distinguish between what is profane and what is holy. Anyone whose destiny allows him to penetrate into the spiritual worlds has the obligation to speak as widely as possible to people's healthy human understanding, so that this healthy human understanding can find the way to the spiritual worlds again.

Although this is an absolutely general task of the times—an obligation to the whole of mankind—we have a special obligation to the middle European region in which we live. If anyone has been deeply interested for decades, as I have, in the beginning made in German spiritual life in the direction of a new spiritual perception by Lessing (who I have mentioned today), Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the German philosophers, then he knows—through the interest he takes in this spiritual life, if he does so in such a way that he makes those forces his own which motivated Goethe, Schiller and the rest—that this spiritual life leads straight into what I have been speaking about today and the day before yesterday. In order to overcome the terrible materialistic development of recent times, we in middle Europe can begin by bringing to mind again that which had its beginnings in the Great Age of Germany. Then what is called anthroposophical spiritual science will follow on naturally. That is why, just at this time when the German spirit is so little appreciated anywhere, we chose to call the building conceived as a High School for Spiritual Science the ‘Goetheanum.’ ‘Goetheanum’ as a sign that from the spiritual point of view, the Goetheanistic German spirit has the courage to face the world.

I know, too, that we are not sinning against Goethe if, in order to link on to something historical, we use the term Goetheanism for the new way of thought and vision we have spoken of today and the day before yesterday. However much is taken away from us in external ways, and however much power the world has today to make things as difficult as possible for us in external matters, it can never take away from us our connection with the best of German qualities, if we ourselves intend having this connection. If we have this intention, however, then even in these dark and sad times we shall not lose hope—the hope of a re-awakening, in a new form, of the spiritual life of mankind, that we are perhaps destined to have just in this time of greatest need.

If we continue with the kind of thing the materialistic age has brought into human evolution in recent times, we shall get further and further removed from the spirit and more and more attached to matter. But if we turn our minds to our super-sensible nature and develop this in ourselves, we shall add the results of spirit vision to the dazzling achievements of the materialistic natural scientific outlook. This spirit vision will then be like the soul of the world conception of outer nature. These two ways are open to human evolution today: either to keep to a perception of the material world and drag mankind further into chaos and distress, or to give birth to our higher inner being from out of our super-sensible nature and the super-sensible world. One of these directions, the materialistic way, can already be seen in the ripples it sends to the surface.

With its external logic of the intellect and its inability to find its way to the inner logic of facts, external science actually sees things very inexactly. I will give you one example of what I mean: There is a philosophical view prevalent at the present time that is a genuine product of materialistic thought. It was advocated by Avenarius and Mach, and it is to the effect that man's field of experience is limited to what he takes in through ordinary sense perception and ordinary consciousness. These two particular men expressed the materialistic outlook by means of some very clever philosophy, and if we inquire into what they expressed with such dedication we shall acquire great respect for their intellectual achievements. If we remain within the ordinary outlook, we shall accept philosophers like Avenarius and Mach as individual philosophical phenomena. But if we go beyond the ordinary outlook, and recognise the inner impulses behind world conceptions such as these, our eyes will be opened, and we shall see the mysterious way these world conceptions work in life. We shall then hit upon the remarkable connection existing between these world conceptions and the decline that threatens European civilisation today, and comes from the East, from Russia, from bolshevism. We shall realise that the practice of bolshevism is the end result of world conceptions like these. This is further confirmed by the fact that the philosophy of Avenarius and Mach is the state philosophy of bolshevism. This connection is known today only to those who penetrate into the spirit of things and who can rise above the noise of party opinion. Party opinion rides roughshod over everything that has to be said right now for the salvation of mankind. This kind of factual logic I have shown you is more important for the man of today than all the logic of sophistry, which would certainly never lead over from Avenarius and Mach to bolshevism. But the facts do. If you want to understand the origins of the things happening today to destroy civilisation within the civilised world, look at the philosophies of the past few decades, the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, and you will find further confirmation of the fact that two ways are open to us today: One way continues with the materialistic approach, despite the fact that its logic is as subtle as that of Avenarius and Mach; and the other, that has been characterised here, wants to participate in the spirit. If we carry on in the first direction, the effect on European spiritual life will be that man's spirit will become mechanised, man's soul vegetative and man's body animalised. This is the fate that actually threatens us today. If men become addicted to this western mechanisation of the spirit, this state of being will combine with eastern animalisation, which means that social demands will be on a level of animal instinct and blind impulse. Western mechanisation and eastern animalisation are connected one with another. In between these is the vegetative or drowsy nature of soul that does not want to be woken up by a treading of the path to the spirit. This is the one perspective. Mankind will have to choose between becoming mechanised in spirit, vegetative in soul and animalised in body or going the other way. Hardship and distress will no doubt eventually drive us into going the other way. And although it will be the other people who have the power, they will not be able to bar us from going this other way, the way leading to the spirit. We shall have to want to go this way. We shall have to want to keep our spirit free, even if our bodies are in bondage. Out of the feelings and experience which can come to us out of a consciousness of super-sensible man and the super-sensible world, we shall have to resolve to have inner self-reliance. Then the others will not be able to harm us. And I should like to describe in the following words what might then come about after all:

In the course of the nineteenth century we middle Europeans were foolish enough to copy the western nations, even though there were no grounds for this in western civilisation. Through hardship and distress, through the very power these have over us, we shall perhaps find the way to stop imitating all that we were foolish enough to imitate when we chose them for a model.

Now, when they want to use their power to give us the lead in the mechanisation of the spirit, may we find the strength, in this old middle Europe of ours that has such a great heritage, to tread the path to the spirit from out of ourselves. We shall then avoid the materialistic mechanisation of the spirit and attain the freedom I attempted to characterise as early as the beginning of the 1890s in my Philosophy of Freedom. The liberated spirit will bring us to a real vision of the spiritual world. The spirit will also help us find the way to the equality of man. For human equality can never exist in the external economic order only. As soon as man understands the super-sensible nature of his own ensouled spirit being, however, he will be able to find the law that makes him an equal among equals. He will also deepen science; for with spiritual vision, as I have indicated here today, medicine, law, and the art of education will find their real source. Science will then lead neither to the mechanisation of the spirit as it has hitherto, nor to the inequality of man, for complete freedom of the spirit will come to man when the spirit seeks it on spirit paths; human equality will come to human souls when the spirit seeks it on paths of the soul; and finally, when the human being who knows himself to be a super-sensible spirit being approaches another person lovingly, then—because human beings will be associating with one another as conscious spirit beings in a loving way—in addition to having a liberated spirit and a soul that is equal with its neighbours, man will have, both in his human nature and in social life, a true, spiritualised, ensouled, thoroughly human brotherliness!

Introductory words by Rudolf Steiner

Dear attendees! In light of what the chairman has told you, I imagine that our evening could preferably unfold in such a way that the esteemed attendees ask specific questions. In this way we shall best achieve our purpose, which has just been explained to you. So it will perhaps be best if I say just a few words in advance to give you a little background for the discussion that follows, which, I believe, should be the main thing today.

You will, as the chairman assumed, have taken note of what I, based on a lifetime of experience, had to do for a truly practical way to socialization, which only came to a conclusion under the loudly speaking facts of the present. Just briefly, I would like to characterize some things.

The point is that in the future we must strive radically for what I have called the threefold social order in an Appeal and in my book. This can be achieved much more quickly than many people think. This threefold social order would lead to the existence in the future of an independent spiritual organism that would govern itself and would have the task of caring for the natural foundations of the human being, that is, his or her individual abilities, in the same way that the natural foundations must otherwise be cared for in economic life. The second would be the organization that has to take the place of the present state, the actual legal organization. In the first place, it would have to regulate all the present conditions of ownership and property, which are the main thing in the actual socialization of property. On the one hand, there would be the question of what should take the place of the State. The present conditions of violence, property and ownership would have to be transferred into conditions based on the law in which all men are equal. And on the other hand, everything that comprises the entire field of labor law would be regulated in this intermediate link of the social organism that replaces the state.

I see labor law as being endangered whenever it is to be regulated within the cycle of economic life itself. The damage that occurs in today's economy, in particular, is usually misjudged. I have made a great effort to form a corresponding picture not from what has been written about the things – because in truth very little can be learned from that – but directly from life. I would like to briefly discuss these matters today so that we can move on to specific questions. I have explained it in detail in my book: as long as there is a belief that the question of what constitutes working hours, and the extent and type of work, should be regulated within the economic body itself, the worker cannot obtain his rights. The worker must already have his labor law fully regulated when he comes face to face with the labor manager. Only then will he be in a position to draw up a real contract in place of today's sham contracts, the wage contract, or whatever you want to call it, which is not a free contract because the worker does not have the labor law behind him, which is what enables him to conclude a truly free contract. In this economic system, the worker cannot obtain justice, but only through the separation of the entire legal system from economic life and its transfer to what should take the place of the state.

The third possibility is the independent economic organism. In this case, we shall no longer have to deal with any dependence of labor law on any kind of economic situation, price formation, and so on, but all economic consequences, especially all economic price formations, will arise not as a cause but as an effect of what is already established in labor law, or rather, in labor law itself. Labor law will be to economic life what natural conditions are to the natural world. Through this alone you will create a sound basis for the socialization of the economic cycle.

You see, this view is truly not an ideological one, not a utopian one, but one that has emerged from my involvement – and that is almost as old or quite as old as my life – in the proletarian movement. Of course, one then looks back at how the social movement has developed. The social movement is truly not of today. It is something, even in the form in which it lives today, quite old. One might think that if one wants to understand the social movement today, one only has to go back to the Communist Manifesto. But anyone who wants to get a proper grip on things today, when we are at such a tremendous turning point, when we are not facing a small reckoning but a great reckoning, and not just wants to understand them, must actually trace back economic life and the ideas that people have formed about it to earlier times.

Because, you see, it is truly not a matter of indifference that, for example, in 1826, at a time when most people in Europe had not yet thought of anything like a social question, a person like Thünen already predicted in a certain way what then occurred as a consequence of our world catastrophe. Thünen was a person who worked the land himself, but not in the usual way. He did so with full understanding and with a relationship to economic life that was based on reality. As early as 1826, this Thünen said: If people do not decide to do what is necessary in social terms, then Europe is heading for terrible devastation and barbarism. — So people already knew this, but there were only a few who spoke like this. This was said in 1826.

Now, in the course of the 19th century, honest and sincere people repeatedly struggled with what is called the social question, and I would like to emphasize once again – this was not decisive for me but nevertheless something that throws back a light – that the one who objectively deals with what has emerged on the part of some as the demand of socialism – yesterday was indeed spoken about in more detail – could only say to himself: socialism must come one day. Socialism is a necessity. It must come, it will come. And then he also had to realize that the arguments put forward by people who are sincere about socialism are important. And, if you have gone through all the nonsense of the economists who thought they had to refute Marx, you can say: the most important claims of Karl Marx cannot be refuted, are quite impossible to refute. But if you turn to the other side, not to the mercenaries and servants of the capitalists, of course, but to those who had social understanding, you will also find among them those who, out of the reality of practical life, raised objections to socialism that could make one stop and think. It is not uninteresting that in the same year that the Communist Manifesto went out into the world, a book was published by Bruno Hildebrand, an honest person who has put forward weighty arguments against socialism. And especially if you are an honest socialist, you may have some strange thoughts when you read such things. I do not want to attach any importance to what this or that other person from bourgeois circles has said, that is mostly nonsense, but when you have something like Bruno Hildebrand's account in front of you, you do end up saying to yourself: On the one hand, you can't object to socialism, it's bound to come. However, the concerns that people like Hildebrand have are extremely difficult to refute. For Hildebrand does not raise his objections out of any dislike of socialism, but rather, in view of socialism as he knew it in 1848 – and the same would apply to Hildebrand today, at least until 1914 – he has merely expressed his concerns. He imagined that if socialism were introduced in the old style, it would not be the middle classes who would somehow suffer, but those who wanted socialism would ultimately achieve nothing. In a sense, people like Hildebrand already foresaw what could happen when precisely such people from the circles of the Socialist Party come to the top, because the desires of the broad masses of the proletariat cannot arise from that background.

You see, there are of course many different views on this. And if we are completely honest about it, we have to say: Yes, it is a general defect of our current human thinking that we are not able to find something that is not just made up, because, despite what is said, socialist programs are often just made up. Today we need something that is not made up.

What I have just told you now sheds some light on what has emerged for me from practical life. If I look at the development of socialist thought in the 19th century and also take into account Hildebrand and revisionist thought in the 19th century, then I come to the following conclusion: If socialism is to be implemented in such a way that economic activity continues under the hypnosis of the unified state, that is, if the unified state is merely extended to cover economic matters, then the broad masses will suffer all the harms that Hildebrand foresaw. That means that we need a socialism that is realized in such a way that these things do not occur. Therefore, the social organism, the economic organism, must not contain anything that could lead to such concerns. And then I said to myself: this is precisely where this threefold division applies, because I take out spiritual life on the one hand and legal life on the other, thereby creating an economic organism that can no longer give rise to concerns because generous socialization can be carried out in the threefold organism. You will see this in all the specific questions, especially when we then go into the most concrete questions.

Let us take the question of works councils as an example of a question that is becoming topical today, which I hope we will discuss in more detail later. You see, my proposals are based on reality and are therefore not a finished program, but something that is to be tackled and that is to be developed bit by bit, not slowly, but perhaps also quickly bit by bit, as the circumstances of the time will require. The possibility of really making progress arises from what I have tried to present as a three-pronged impulse for real socialization.

The question of works councils – I hope that it will be discussed in detail later – is a real one today, and practically speaking, we can start from any point in reality today to realize what is set out in my book. Those who think in the old socialist way, for example, imagine these works councils primarily – I have been told this – as being more or less introduced by law, that is, they think of the works councils as a state institution. Now, once again, I am of the opinion that if they are introduced in this way, they will most certainly be a fifth wheel on the wagon. It is only possible to create the works councils out of economic life itself.

I recently said: Let the works councils arise, and do not interfere in their creation by passing laws about them! They should come into being first, they should arise first in the individual companies, but they must create a position for themselves, especially during the transition period, that makes them completely independent of the previous bosses and plant managers. They must, of course, have an independent position.

Then the next step will be to ensure that the companies that are set up today form their own corporate body across the economic territories in question. For anyone today who still understands socialization as merely wanting to socialize individual companies would very soon see the strange position we would be in in five years if we only socialized individual companies. If we were to socialize only individual enterprises, we would end up with the wildest individualism of the individual enterprises, and the most dissatisfied would be the workers. There would be such inequality among workers in terms of income that it would be unbearable. You can only socialize if you socialize the entire economic entity, of a certain size, as such.

So, first of all, it is a matter of establishing works councils for certain similar businesses in a certain area. A very important act of overall socialization emanates from the works councils, so that not only is a bond created between the works councils of similar businesses, but across all businesses. Then a real socialization of economic life can gradually occur. Only then will things be a blessing. If, therefore, we begin to develop an understanding of the extraordinarily important appointment of works councils, we will see that we are on the right track with the idea of tripartism. We shall only achieve something if we do not tolerate the intervention of that which replaces the state in the functions of the works councils in any way other than merely with reference to the fact that the state has to ensure that the works councils can function, just as it naturally has to ensure that I can walk down a street without being attacked. But otherwise than the state otherwise relates to the personal rights of the individual, it should also not relate to the works councils with some kind of limitations of functions and so on. The functions must arise from the self-constitution of the works council within the economic body. That alone leads to success. With this example I wanted to show you how threefolding is actually meant. It is meant to be practical, that is, everything we have to do tomorrow and the day after tomorrow can only lead somewhere if it is handled from the point of view of threefold division. Then things will interact in the right way.

You see, my suggestion assumes that socialism, now that it is here, cannot be taken off the agenda. Anyone who is familiar with the conditions in both economic and political life, and thus in legal and intellectual life, can no longer imagine, because that is an unrealistic notion, that socialism can be introduced today and then it will be here tomorrow. No, once socialism is in place, it will have to be continuously worked on. Socialism will always have to be handled in a new way. It is something very much alive. We must have precisely those organizations that work again and again in the spirit of socialism. People do not yet come up with their thoughts in line with what is actually happening in this area.

A long time ago, a strange sentence emerged from a school of economics. It is considered overcome today, but it still haunts people's minds. It was the Physiocrats who said that there was no need to prescribe laws for economic life, because either it develops by itself in line with these laws, in which case they are not needed, or you prescribe different laws that do not correspond to the development. But then you would harm the economy. It seems that, when stated in this way, it is absolutely right and yet is totally wrong, namely for the reason that economic life is not something that remains stationary, that is, remains as it once was. It is an organism, and just as a natural organism grows older and older and changes, and one must recognize its change as a condition of life, so it must be with economic life. That means that laws must be there, but they must arise from economic life itself. Thus, the impulses must always be there to counteract the damage to economic life that it must inflict on itself. Anyone who believes that he can introduce socialism once and for all is like a person who says: I ate yesterday, and that was enough to fill me up. Now I don't need to eat anymore. You have to eat continuously because the organism is constantly undergoing certain changes and because it is a living thing. And so it is with what socialist measures are. You have to continually socialize because the social organism is a living thing. And that is also what leads to the necessity for us to create something like works councils and much more right from the start.

You see, the greatest mistake that has been made so far is that people have believed that social life is something like a reproduction of an organism made of papier-mâché. So they imagined it was a mechanism; it is not alive. But it is alive, only people have given the social organism such laws that should apply to something that is dead. But the organism went further, and now people are surprised when revolutions come. That which must be continually improved upon accumulates when it is not improved upon and breaks out in revolutions. Revolutions have been made by those who were short-sighted enough not to recognize the liveliness of social life. I do not mean those who are pushed to do one thing or another, but those who are the leaders and do not understand how to exercise leadership. That is why it is so important today that, if sooner or later the call is really made again to take matters into our own hands, we do not approach the matter with empty heads again, but come up with constructive proposals. It is not enough to say that power must be acquired. That is certainly true, but then, what can we do with that power once we have it? I wanted to say that first. Now I hope that the discussion can become a very lively one through your questions.

Discussion

Debater Beierat explains, among other things: When it comes to socialization, the entrepreneurs must also be asked, because the workers cannot solve all the questions on their own. In order to have a handle so that the previous owners help to create the works councils, it is necessary that a legal basis is created that is the same for the whole Reich.¹

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to say a few words about this, because perhaps we can best move forward by addressing the individual questions.

You see, what the previous speaker just said is not fundamentally inconsistent with what I have put forward. I just tried to approach the matter not theoretically, but in such a practical way that it really leads somewhere. If you want to achieve something practical, you should not let yourself be discouraged by not wanting to make a definite start somewhere. The beginning of something practical must always be made somewhere, and after all, before we came here, there was a meeting down in a small room where all the works councils that already exist were gathered. So at least a start has been made. The only thing that matters is that something practical comes out of such a beginning. Of course, you can think of this beginning as you like, you can make another one. In this connection I would remind you that I spoke about this yesterday: that for the practical implementation of the threefold order, it is of course necessary first of all to set up a kind of liquidation government. I certainly do not think that we can decide today to implement the threefold order by tomorrow!

Since we are living in a time when people can only think in terms of a unitary state, we must, under all circumstances, not because we love any particular government, but because people have lived together in the state until now, have a government for a wide range of different things. Contrary to what the previous speaker said, I must say: Whether it is one government or the other is not important to me. So it is very important to me that it is a government that makes proposals in the sense of real socialization. So I do not feel that is a correct statement: “It does not matter to me whether it is one government or the other.” Because precisely when there is a government, it will have to be clear that in the future it will have to stand only on the legal ground and liquidate, on the one hand, intellectual life and, on the other, economic life. Then, in the form of such a liquidation government, the right authority will be there to create that transitional period, and to do so with reasonable measures. These would then form the basis on which the works councils can be built up, which, instead of some of the other things that various governments are doing today, could in fact use their power to somehow persuade the recalcitrant employers - forgive the expression - to take up reasonable socialization ideas. That would be the task of a reasonable government during the transition period.

These foundations, which still have to be laid today by the liquidation government, could already be in place. But in doing so, this liquidation government in particular would have to be thoroughly imbued with the realization that government laws must never interfere with the development of a healthy economic life, so that this economic life can truly build itself up from the ground up. Therefore, it is necessary that the liquidation government ensures that works councils can emerge. However, it must not interfere in their entire formation. This must happen from within the works council itself.

The government has no other task than to ensure that the works councils can constitute themselves beyond their economic territories, that is, out of economic necessity. This will be the best foundation if the government ensures that the works councils can work properly. The works councils can constitute themselves if the government creates a basis and does not want to rule over them.

Today, the actual difference between ruling and governing is not known, and one can actually be very surprised that, as a result of the November events, people have learned so little about this distinction. There is – this distinction is not mine, but Karl Marx's – a very considerable difference between governing and ruling. And when a government learns to govern and no longer believes that it is only a government when it can rule, then even what the broad masses can imagine under socialization will be possible. For in the future it is not a government that must rule, but the whole broad mass of the people. The government must govern and learn how to govern when the whole broad mass of the people actually rules. The people have not yet got out of the habit of associating the term 'ruler' with a single personality or body. This is something that must be thoroughly eradicated from the people's way of thinking. When a body is set up with socialization in mind – and it must be set up in the same way as works councils – the difference between governing and ruling must be understood above all. Everything that belongs to the powers of the works councils must be formed from the broad masses of the workers. Governance will only consist of creating a real basis, not a legal basis, so that the works council can form freely, purely out of economic necessity, out of knowledge and insight.

You see, the peculiar thing about my proposals for threefolding is that I do not draw up programs, but rather that I try to give such suggestions based on reality so that something reasonable can arise. I say openly: in this way my impulses for threefolding differ from all the rest. Yesterday it was said here that they contain nothing new. They contain something fundamentally new. People who spoke of socialization and other reforms in the past were clever and knew exactly what should be done. I do not claim to be cleverer than the others, but I firmly believe that conditions can be brought about in which those who know something about the matter can come into their own. I do not want to show the way to what the works councils should do, but how they can educate themselves. Then they will recognize for themselves what they have to do. I want to put the right people in the right place. I do not claim to know anything new, but I want the new to come into being.

Various participants in the discussion take the floor.

Rudolf Steiner: With reference to the two esteemed previous speakers, it gives me a certain satisfaction to note that I myself have little left to say, because the discussion between these two speakers has progressed in such a gratifying way that one has completely complemented the other and what actually needs to be said has already been said. I would just like to add the following.

When it is said that there is a difference between focusing all thoughts on the path: How do we gain the power of domination? – and the other way of thinking: What do we do when we have gained power? I must say that I am always reminded of what played such a strong role in the discussions of the 1880s. In those years I had occasion to discuss many questions that were already being dealt with on socialist ground at the time, for example with Adler in Vienna, who recently passed away, and also with Pernerstorfer, who also died last year. And of course, these socialist thinkers of the past were even closer to the great socialist impulses that came from Marx and Engels. It was not yet the time of so-called revisionism, which I believe has done a lot of harm to the development of socialism. I don't want to be misunderstood, but I have always thought that this gentle transition of real socialism into a somewhat unclear, bourgeois way of thinking, which was called revisionism, has actually done a great deal of harm, for the simple reason that some people are so terribly satisfied when they can say: We want what is practical and achievable for tomorrow. These people do not consider that what is achieved for tomorrow can, under certain circumstances, undermine all ground for the day after tomorrow. I often had to object to Adler and Pernerstorfer that I recognize everything that they mention as criticism of the present social order, but one must also have something that one would do when what these socialist leaders themselves assumed finally occurred. These socialist leaders always predicted: This present social order will dismantle itself, it will destroy itself. That was an absolutely correct view. And that is why these socialist leaders always waved away any suggestion that something should be done to forcibly replace the current order with another. They were, in the most eminent sense, developmental socialists, and they said: the dismantling will be taken care of, then it will be the proletariat's turn. — I have always been of the opinion that if you assume what will happen, then you should know.

Are we not actually in a different situation today? We have the November events behind us, and you can be quite sure that those people who were leaders at the time had already imagined something like the November events, but now there was nothing that could be done positively. This shows that it is of some importance not just to keep asking the question, 'How do we gain power?' like a hypnotized chicken, but to ask ourselves, 'What do we do with power?' I keep asking this: How do we act?

The previous speaker said that economic collapse is coming. I don't actually share this view. I believe that it has long since arrived, and that what is being done by the ruling circles is just a continuous covering up and concealment of the economic collapse that has long since occurred. The economic collapse has been there since the time when it was officially declared that it was best for the German Reich to no longer produce for the needs of the people, but for what is blown up into the air. Thus, the economic collapse has actually taken place. And it was always inexplicable to me how little the

people have actually realized that with a measure such as the Auxiliary Service Act, which corresponds well to the subjective needs of the old rulers, a terrible blow has been dealt to economic life that cannot really be cured by anything. They have only ever thought of other things, but had no sense of the economic consequences of such a measure.

So, I believe that economic collapse is here, and we are facing events that will only be delayed as long as it is still possible to disguise or conceal certain things through this or that. But then we will have to know how to set up the new structure. I therefore have nothing against what the previous speaker, Mr. Schreiber, said, but I say to you: It will come about of itself that the leadership must turn from the circles that have been leading up to now to the circles that the previous speaker had in mind. But all the more must these circles feel the sense of responsibility, so that when they come to power they are able to do the right thing. So that is what I want to emphasize again and again and what is of very special importance to me.

It has been said, not as a reproach, but in agreement with me, that I first want the institution of the works councils and then it will become clear what their functions will be. But then we must not have any illusions, because what the new structure will demand will not be very easy, and it will not be possible without real factual knowledge of the economic body. The previous speaker has just given us a number of useful examples. We must not fall back on amateurism; we must be properly prepared when we make the observation, for example, that the work of the works council is not completed when individual businesses are socialized. What the previous speaker said about the right of co-determination, about profit, which must take on a completely different form, and what he said about the right of co-determination in relation to price, shows us that as soon as these concrete things come up, we have a great deal of work to do in the factual field. For it is precisely with these things, which are peculiar to capitalist, private capitalist ownership, that it has not dealt with, but has simply left humanity to a wild competition of interests, of income and so on.

We must not continue in this direction, otherwise we will soon revert to the old conditions. Whether those who then manage the means of production are called capitalists or something else is irrelevant. There is also the possibility that people will come to the top from the ranks – I don't want to say necessarily from the proletariat, but from those who lead the proletariat – who then, under certain circumstances, are in no way inferior to the practices of old capitalists; well, that is something that can only be avoided if we are firmly in the saddle.

You will not hold it against me if I mention something that seems theoretical, but is in fact practical. When it comes to the right of co-determination in pricing, two things come into particular consideration. In a random economic system that is not socialized, the price is regulated from two sides, because it is a kind of law of nature that the price is not based on one force, but on two forces. For example, suppose a certain amount of butter is produced in an economic context. Let us assume that more butter is produced than is necessary for human needs. Then, under certain circumstances, it may well happen that the rest of the butter that people do not need, say, for example, is used to make cart grease. This causes the butter to become much cheaper than it is, for example, when less butter is produced than the total number of people needs. Such things are included in the formation of prices in the most eminent sense. That is one direction from which pricing is determined. The other direction, namely that pricing is based on production costs, is quite separate from the above-mentioned direction in economic life; what is taken into account is what production costs. A completely different price system is formed there, and this price system intersects with the random economic system, that is, with the other. And as a result, we get mutual competition not only of prices but also of price systems, and that is where we are today.

Now just think about this: if the regulation of a worker's income is based on only one price system, then you may find that the worker gets higher and higher wages, but never a better standard of living, because the prices of housing and all the other things rise to the same extent. You can close one hole, but another one opens up by itself. We can only create order here if we are properly equipped.

In the future, one thing must be taken into account, namely how the causes converge from the most diverse sides. This will be necessary if socialization is to really live, not as a mere heartfelt demand, but in a practical way as an impulse. And if the works councils are to have a say in pricing, they will have to be prepared for these things. They will have to work at it, and not say, “Oh, the speeches, the idealistically conceived speeches, they achieve nothing.” No, these are not idealistically conceived speeches, but practical instructions for what has to be done. People cannot simply take on a task without first agreeing on how to do it. Things, including in economic life, must really be learned. And today there is not much knowledge available. We must make a great effort in this regard, must have the good will to come to institutions, and then try to relearn in the most diverse circles. I consider it terribly necessary that the works councils set up cooperatives as quickly as possible, in which people work together with good will, so that we can achieve a real, economically appropriate reconstruction.

We will have to do a great deal of intellectual work if we want to make progress. I ask you to bear this in mind. It was therefore very satisfying that the previous speakers drew attention to this matter. It will be a matter of really putting ourselves in their shoes, of not wanting to be clever and know something alone, so that attention is drawn to the fact that we must bring people to the point where they can share with each other the life experiences that individuals have gained while working. Then, precisely through this collaboration of people in the right positions, socialization will take place.

Further contributions to the discussion follow, and a motion is put forward that Dr. Steiner would like to give further lectures to discuss the important questions further. Dr. Steiner agrees.

Final words from Rudolf Steiner: Yes, my dear attendees, the motion has been accepted that this discussion may continue. So there will be an opportunity to talk about some of the questions that have arisen in the course of the discussion, perhaps later in a more favorable way than today, when time is already too far advanced for me to say anything significant or to expect you to understand. I will therefore only very briefly address a few points that arose during the last part of the discussion.

First there was the question of how I envision further development when workers' councils exist but mean nothing, that is, when the workers' councils are merely a kind of decoration until the political upheaval. - Well, I do believe that in such matters one does harm with all too much pessimism. I believe that in practical life, in such a serious situation as the one we find ourselves in, it is eminently important that we help each other. This does not at all preclude the works councils, when they bring to the surface of the social movement what they have learned and experienced in the factories – and there will be a wealth of social insight in this – essentially also contributing to bringing about the time when the necessary upheavals can bring us. We should not be content with saying: We have to wait until the revolution has occurred. Instead, we have to recognize that if the works councils remain in their posts, we will have a very important means of moving forward.

I believe you should not think too little of what the works councils can be. They will not be a decoration if they stand their ground. Much will arise precisely as a task for the works councils, in which even the most malicious employers will not be able to interfere. They will not be able to somehow eliminate the matter. I believe, therefore, that we should start in practice at some point — and this is an important point. We should not hold back, being overly cautious or even fearing that the works councils might be merely decorative, but we should take action. This is also what the “call” and the impulse of threefolding contain. We should not just carry on talking, but the words should be the seeds of deeds, and that is the essence of the whole series of lectures that I have given, and that will be the essence if I really have the honor of speaking to you in more detail about these things. And another thing: there has been a lot of talk about intellectual workers, especially in the last part of the discussion. Well, I can claim some experience in this field. It is based on what I have lived through over many years. The intellectual workers have ended up in an actually dreadful situation due to the circumstances that I am describing in my lectures. It is almost impossible, even after these terrible experiences of world war catastrophe, to talk to the great mass of those who call themselves intellectual workers about political issues. I am not flattering you when I say – as I have already said in my lecture – that, in terms of political training and education, the manual laboring proletariat is far ahead of the intellectual workers, and that the intellectual workers' political education is almost non-existent. This must be taken into account. In this context, something else must be considered.

I am of the opinion that it will not have a fundamentally favorable effect if a council of intellectual workers develops separately alongside the actual workers' councils. Perhaps this will have to be an important point in the discussion when it comes to the lectures that were requested of me. I believe that nothing can come of the segregation of intellectual workers as special “intellectual workers” from the other workers. The workers who work in a particular area of a company belong, even if they are intellectual workers, to the workers of that branch of the company. There must be a sense of belonging between all the workers in the individual branches of the company. We will not make progress if the intellectual workers of the various branches of the company isolate themselves and act as if they are something special, because the category, the term “intellectual workers” has no justification. One should awaken understanding for the fact that the intellectual workers of the individual branches of industry should join the other workers. Only then will something sensible come of it.

I do not agree with what has been said, namely that intellectual workers and manual workers are on the same ground when they jointly recognize the program of threefolding. This is, after all, a general social policy program, and they are not yet on solid ground! One can jointly recognize many programs, but one only stands on solid ground when this ground is a living ground, when one does not, in turn, form an aristocratic class out of what belongs together. I see an aristocratic class formation in this separation of the spiritual workers, and this should be understood. And if what I actually mean were implemented, then the intellectual worker would gain an enormous amount, above all in political education, which I would generally emphasize in the near future, so that each person learns from the other.

I would therefore not wish to be as pessimistic as the previous speaker, who said: Yes, it is above all important that a certain specialized education and training is the absolute basis for the works councils. – It is indeed the case today that anyone familiar with the situation knows that not much can be gained from the usual specialized training, which today is, after all, a thoroughly bourgeois product. I expect more from practical collaboration, from what arises when everyone contributes what they can from their life experiences. We will train each other, and something completely new will arise. I could imagine that the best results will be achieved when the workers' councils work together in the right way and without maintaining the philistine prejudice that one should first go to school, and when there is a sincere will to learn from each other and to learn from both mistakes. Above all, we will need to socialize in this way, from person to person. Socialization means working together, helping each other, developing brotherhood, and that is precisely what we need in the spiritual realm. In recent years, I have often said to my audiences that the world believes that those who are to learn can only learn from those who have so many diplomas. Those who really want to learn – they may have already learned a great deal – can learn an awful lot from a child of two or three years old, or even younger. This is learning from life, and we will have to cultivate it especially. We must get beyond the Philistinism of the old technical school system, then the works councils will be able to achieve something tremendously important for the new structure. The matter should not be viewed pessimistically, but with trust. From trust will grow efficiency. Then the works councils will not be a decoration, if they do not want to be a decoration themselves.

However, I fully agree that the works councils will be a buffer on two sides. I do not believe that the time we are heading for, if we want to work seriously, will be one in which we let ourselves be carried by the waves of life, possibly even lying down on a soft bed of rest from time to time. We shall have to work very hard and we must not shrink from being storm-troops in all directions. It will not be easy to create something new out of the collapse. We need only remember that the old economic system, especially in Germany, led us into sheer nonsense. We are not only in a state of collapse, but also in a state of nonsense. Just consider what it means if, in the next few years, only the interest is to be paid on everything that has accumulated as a result of the devastation of the war! It is much more than Dernburg calculated. It will be at least 30 billion marks a year; where will it come from? 30 billion marks, which of course will not be available! If we think of continuing anything from the past, then we are not only heading for impossible conditions, but also for sheer nonsense. It will be difficult, very difficult, but I think that anyone who has a slight understanding of the spirit of the times must say to himself: we just have to work, we have to work seriously. Only in this way can we get out of this situation.

Now I would just like to point out that I do not want to go into Mr. Remmele's reply, and that is because it is not yet clear to me what the main point of his objections is. What has been said makes the whole matter seem strange to me, because, you see, you can call anything a false doctrine. I was immediately suspicious when it was said that it was a heresy like the teaching of Dühring, who taught the same thing decades ago. I know Dühring and suspect that the speaker knows him little, because I can safely recommend to you: read him, then you will see that he did not want the same thing, but something completely different from what I consider necessary. I consider Dühring's teachings to be the outburst of a man who was somewhat angry with human society and who did not know much about reality. It is sometimes witty, but it is not something that can be applied in reality. Such objections are then fleeting. I believe it is perhaps not advisable to go into these things at length, because in time it will become apparent from the way in which the words, which can initially be spoken out of reality, can also be transformed into deeds and become part of reality. I am reassured when reality tests what I say. I believe it will know how to take in what I have to say.

Mr. Molt has already spoken to you about what was said against the signatures of the appeal, and I believe that in this respect, through your consent to Mr. Molt, you have truly shown your fundamental understanding of something that is absolutely necessary. You can be quite sure that not many entrepreneurs will act out of the kind of attitude shown by those who signed this “appeal”. But those who do act in this way are fully aware that, on the one hand, this “appeal” and these impulses were certainly not created for the sake of the factory owners, but if the factory owners are to have anything to do with them, then they must commit to them for the freest of human reasons. At the most, the factory owners can profess their support for the “appeal”, but the “appeal” has no consideration for them and will not do so. That is one thing. On the other hand, it must be seen that it will be necessary to work precisely with those people who, out of the most earnest will, profess the cause of socialization, of social progress in the objective sense at all, because otherwise you only have the choice – since, after all, those who have some expertise will still be needed – either to occupy the top positions and leave everything else as it was, as we have seen in some examples, or you run the risk of everything being sabotaged by those on the inside.

It is therefore not only a matter of our being able to appreciate the right attitude in a feeling-based way, but we must also be able to see what is necessary, to see that we are not working towards the sabotage of those who, out of the old way of thinking, do not want to develop the new. We must realize that we are compelled to work together with those who have joined the “call” not out of selfish interest but for the sake of the cause. This has happened with the signatories, otherwise they would not be on it. For I have not yet found that anyone has placed themselves behind me in order to satisfy their selfish interests. That is an experience I have had all my life. They will not make any too bad experiences. Forgive this personal remark, but we will be able to discuss many a factual question in detail, just as the seriousness of the times demands. In this brief closing address, I could only hint at a few things, but I hope that the discussions will be able to continue.

• 1. The wording of the votes of individual participants in the discussion was not always recorded by the stenographer – and then sometimes only in fragments. Sometimes the texts that have been handed down are also summaries of the meaning of the comments.

Introductory words by Rudolf Steiner

Dear attendees,
You have just heard how this evening is to proceed. We will make the best progress in the whole movement, which is to serve the social reconstruction, if we try to communicate on this path of questioning and free discussion about what should happen. Since I will have to inform myself through your later contributions to the discussion about what is to be discussed this evening, I will only take a few words to draw attention to a few things, since it may be good to put them forward in advance of our disputations. Above all, I would like to emphasize once more that this 'Federation for the Threefold Social Organism' differs in some respects from other, party-like movements, without these party-like movements being in any way disturbed or impaired by this 'Federation for Threefold Social Organism'. If the “Federation for the Threefold Order of the Social Organism” believes it must take action today, it is for a very specific reason.

You are all well aware of how long the call for socialization has been going around in a more emotional way. You all also know that this call for socialization has taken on a particularly urgent form today. They know that we cannot escape confusion and chaos if we do not take into account what is contained in the demand for socialization, if we do not seriously strive through action for what can really be called socialization.

On the other hand, we see that precisely since the beginning of the German Revolution, it has become clear in so many ways that although the call for socialization is there, at the same time there is a lack of ideas about what should actually be done, how what is demanded as socialization should actually be implemented. Right now, every day brings new evidence of how little people are clear about what needs to be done to bring about socialization. And so we see that the call for socialization is becoming clearer and clearer, more and more justified, but that the government is not doing anything significant, or even insignificant, to achieve true socialization. Yes, we can even say – perhaps you will want to elaborate on this question or provide more precise information later in the course of the disputation – that it can be clearly seen from what is happening that there is no concept of real socialization.

You may have read the draft law that is supposed to initiate – so they say in bureaucratic language – the institution of the so-called works councils. Of course, the first thing one thinks of is the places where they want to initiate such things today, making laws about what works councils should do, what their rights will be, and so on. But if you take the whole thing, what has now been launched as a draft, you will have to say to yourself: Yes, this does not bear the stamp of true socialization in the slightest. It is even called “socialization of the companies,” as if one could actually socialize the individual companies! What this draft contains for the constitution of the works councils is nothing more than, I would say, the introduction of a certain democratic principle of the parliamentarism with which we are all too familiar into the individual companies. In fact, the matter is already often referred to as the “democratization of the companies”. The parliamentary principle should extend certain offshoots, such gulfs, into the companies, where further parliamentarization should then take place. Yes, just as the previous parliamentarism, in that it was practiced in isolation in all kinds of “houses”, was unable to contribute anything to socialization, so this extension of the parliamentary gulfs will be unable to bring anything of socialization to the factories. You see it best from the fact that in this draft, everywhere the old language of “employer” and “employee” is used. Even if it is not openly stated, it is still the case that the old capitalism continues to lurk behind all of this. Everything is conceived in the old capitalist form. Basically, everything should remain the same, and the employees should be reassured by the fact that works councils can now somehow be elected that have all sorts of theoretical negotiations with the employers. But when it comes to the actual social structure, ultimately everything should remain the same. This can be clearly seen from such a draft by anyone who has a sense of reading something like this at all. Not even the slightest attempt has been made to really dismantle capitalism. And so we see that the very first demand for socialization, the dismantling of capitalism, is not tackled by what is now so often called socialization.

What is left for us to think about in the face of such a government? Truly, today we can no longer arrive at any other conclusion than that the only salvation lies in the fact that the great mass of workers are now truly informed about the damage that the social order has caused so far, and that they are informed about what can really bring about improvement. It is, above all, enlightenment that is needed. In this context, it is important that we should no longer listen to those who keep saying, “But enlightenment takes a long time.” It need not take long if we are willing to make a little effort to see things without masks and illusions, if we try to see things as they are and as they must happen. We no longer have the time to wait years for socialization. Something must happen immediately. But something can only happen if a united mass of people carry what is to be done. People keep asking: Yes, where is the practical instruction for what is written in my book, for example, 'The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future'? The most practical thing is to have as many people as possible demanding what is in my book, so that it becomes quite impossible to continue to govern against these demands. The future power will consist in the fact that it will enforce what it is all about. Otherwise a power will never know how to use that power, what it should do. It really depends on knowing what to do. Therefore, proper education must take place in the broadest circles, and one must be able to form an idea of how something like the dismantling of private capital and the abolition of the wage system can take place.

Above all, one must be able to form a thorough idea of the following. You see, the actual economic question, where does it arise? You have to be able to see it in the right place. You must not let gray theories obscure the facts. You have to see the economic question where it is, and start from there. Where is it? Where is it as a fact? Well, it is there where I have to take my wallet out of my pocket and have the money in it for which I am to get something in a store to satisfy my needs. And there must be enough in my wallet for me to be able to get the things I need to live. That is the basic fact of all economic life. Today, everything else is basically only there to obscure this fact.

Why does the tripartite social organism demand a separation of economic life from legal and spiritual life? It demands this separation for the reason that economic life can be truly socialized in itself, so that it is finally presented in its true form, the true form that takes place between the goods in the shop and the contents of the wallet. Only when we extract from the whole remaining social process that which must take place between the purse and the shop, do we put ourselves in a position to think in a truly socialist way. But what does that mean? It means a great deal. But if one does not start from the right fact, then one cannot arrive at correct views with regard to all the other things.

I will educate myself from your disputation about what is to be said about the details. But before that, I would like to give some necessary guidelines, starting from the basic economic fact I have just described. You see, when I go into a shop and there is something in it that I need to satisfy my vital needs, and I come with my purse and spend the money for the goods from this purse, then you have to be clear about the fact that there is a process involved in this that somewhat obscures the true facts. I get goods, I spend money. Is money a commodity? Can money ever be a commodity? You really don't need to do any in-depth studies, but the in-depth studies prove exactly what I am going to say now.

You just need to have a real sense of what a piece of paper is, and you will say to yourself: a piece of paper can never be a commodity in the same way as, for example, a loaf of bread that you buy in a shop. I think that is something that the simplest mind can understand, and no science can claim anything else. What you take out of your wallet as money cannot be a commodity, but only an instruction to receive a commodity, nothing else. But that is why it must come from the commodity. A commodity must have been produced at some point, so something must have been provided. In this sense, services are also goods. This piece of paper must have been created by such a process that produces goods, and so the piece of paper only forms the bridge between the goods that you buy in the store and those goods that must be produced once so that you can receive the paper instruction for those goods. That, to put it simply, is the economic process. Any other element in the economic process is unhealthy. If it is to be healthy, nothing can be exchanged in the economic process except commodity for commodity.

Now, however, we ask: Is only commodity exchanged for commodity in the economic process today? No, and as soon as you think about it properly, you come to the point. Today, in the economic process, not only goods are exchanged for goods, but today, in the economic process, goods, even if perhaps represented by money, are exchanged for labor. In the economic process, labor power is paid just like goods. But this is how labor power is introduced into the economic process.

You see, there is a very simple consideration that can show you that labor does not belong in the economic process at all, because it can never be compared to any commodity in its nature. You just have to correct people's very convoluted ideas about such things today. You have to understand how people have learned to think about these things incorrectly.

You see, it is still associated with a certain amount of effort on the part of the human organism. Now, even if a person has no need to chop wood, for example, he may still feel the need to work. Then he does sports, for example. And the amount of labor that one devotes to sports could, under certain circumstances, wear out the body just as much as the work of someone chopping wood wears out the body – if he exerts himself particularly during sports. Labor has nothing to do with the economic process, but labor has something to do with the economic process only in that it is applied to something economically valuable. Sport is economically worthless, it exists only for human egoism. Chopping wood is valuable. Because labor is economically valuable, it becomes part of the economic process. But the essential thing about work is that I must be a free person with regard to the use of my labor, that I cannot be compelled by economic coercion to put my labor at the service of capitalism in any old way. When it comes to the use of labor, freedom and bondage and coercion intervene. Just as labor as such must be a matter of law and not of economics, so too, what must be made clear in the simplest possible way, is that in economics only what is produced, created by labor, has any significance.

In economic life, only that which is produced and created by labor has any significance; it must be paid for. But there must be an entrepreneur who pays a worker for his labor. How the labor manager and the worker relate to each other must be determined on a completely different basis, namely that of law. In the economic sphere, when true right exists, the laborer and the labor manager can only be partners who distribute the proceeds of the labor among themselves in a just manner. In the future, there must be no more payment for labor, that is to say, the wage relationship must be eliminated, and furthermore, the wage relationship must not exist.

A state must be brought about, and that is then a social state in which the labor manager and the worker jointly produce the goods and share with each other in a just way according to the contract of goods, not according to the contract of employment, what they produce together as free associates. Only when such a transformation of the production relations has been brought about can one speak of socialization. But then one also stops using all the old terms that are still based on capitalism in a socialization program. You have to rethink things very thoroughly. You really have to throw out the old ideas, not just because they are ideas, but because they are embedded in life.

But now something else must be considered. If the labor force is to be placed in a relationship of compulsion within the economic process, then something must be there. What is that? You see, I have to go back to the original fact of the economic process, to the purse and the shop. If the note that I have in my purse is really nothing more than an order for a commodity, then basically no compulsion to work can prevail, because then this note must always lead back in some way to something that has been put into the world as a service. And it is only a matter of this service then circulating in the appropriate way, circulating in such a way that consumption regulates production at all times. But that is not the case today. What I carry in my wallet has become something quite different from an instruction for the goods as a result of the economic process of recent times. It has become a commodity in its own right, something that has an independent value in the social order. But it has only become so because a type of commodity – which, basically, could be eliminated altogether if only the leading trading state, England, would also eliminate it, then it could be eliminated entirely from the economic process; it can always be eliminated from an internal economic process, it can always be eliminated; one would then only need to take another consideration into account with respect to foreign countries –– that this token, which I carry in my wallet, has a different meaning than being a mere order for goods. This is due to the fact that a commodity has been created by the state, which is not really a commodity, namely gold or silver. In reality, neither is a commodity, but they are represented by the note. This separates the monetary process from the economic process, withdraws it from the economic process, thereby turning money itself into a commodity, and thereby allowing money, which in reality should not be a commodity, to become completely independent in economic life. But this is the basis of capitalism.

[If you can trade money independently, what happens? Since money can never be created other than by producing goods, but goods can never be produced other than through labor in an economy based on the division of labor, power over labor arises through capital. Capital is nothing more than power over human labor. You get the opportunity to obtain human labor by detaching money as an independent commodity from the economic process, while money should actually be just a worthless bill in the sense of an order for what you exchange as a commodity through money. But through this detachment of money, labor has become the servant of the power of “capital.” As a result, something in the economic process, such as the formation of prices, is constantly distorted. For while I should only pay for the goods, I also have to pay for the labor. But because power dominates labor, labor is paid as cheaply as possible, because, of course, a power that dominates tends to buy as cheaply as possible. If labor power is included in the economic process itself, then capitalism cheapens it.

What is important now is that labor must be removed from the economic process. Only goods may be in the economic process. However, because the economic process is so distorted, other things can also be in it. You see, for many decades the socialists have repeatedly called for the socialization of the means of production. But today it is necessary to know how this socialization of the means of production must be effected. It is not enough to merely call for socialization in the abstract; instead, one must know how it can be carried out. Today we have reached the point where we can already realize such things if we really want to, if we really have the courage to.

Before we inform ourselves in detail about the peculiar position of the means of production in today's economic life – essentially, they are capital – it is good if we first look at something else.

Today, not only goods can be bought, that is, what is produced by human labor in the social organism through the division of labor, but one can also buy something quite different, which no human being produces, but which is there by nature, that is, land. But this buying of land or taking out a mortgage on land is only a process of falsifying the economic order. It is something quite different from what people actually imagine. You cannot really buy land, because land only has value when it is worked on. What you buy, that is, what you acquire through the so-called purchase, is the exclusive right to use the land. That is what it comes down to, this exclusive right to use the land.

So you are not buying a commodity when you buy land, but a right. And that is the cancer of today's social order, that within the economic process you can not only buy goods, but you can also buy labor and rights. By buying labor, you acquire the ability to draw that labor into the economic process, that is, to rape it. And by buying the right to use land, you acquire power.

It must be clear that this calamity cannot be overcome unless we tackle the matter radically. The finished means of production, or rather, the finished means of production that are used to produce further products, have exactly the same value in the economic process as land, or rather, the same importance. In reality, you can't buy these finished means of production either. But if you buy them, you are actually acquiring the right to use them exclusively. So, you buy a right again. And now you can see best of all from these means of production that when they are finished, they simply must not be for sale, that the means of production must cease to have a value on the economic market. When they are finished, they are just like land. Now the question arises that really contains a social demand: How do we manage that the means of production no longer have an economic value when they are finished? We can only manage this – as I said earlier – by allowing everything that does not belong in the economic process to be transformed into independent members of the social organism.

What is necessary for production? Is capital really necessary? No! It is nonsense that capital is necessary. In order for the means of production to be operated, it is necessary that intellectual work is there. Of course, every worker understands that intellectual leadership and intellectual work must be present. And he also understands that he would soon have to stop working if there were no intellectual leadership or intellectual work. But today it is not about spiritual leadership, but about private ownership of the means of production and about profitability, about the ability to reinvest the capital invested in the means of production. Therefore, it is necessary to separate the means of production from the economic process so that they can always reach the person with the appropriate abilities and in whom the workers have confidence, through the social order itself. Therefore, the threefold social organism requires an independent spiritual organism. It is simply nonsense to say that this would create new ownership structures... In this spiritual life, which is of course closely connected with the other branches of life, it is then ensured that the means of production make their way through the world differently than through purchase. And in what I call the constitutional state – it really has nothing to do with the old state – it will be ensured that labor can get its rights. In the economic life itself, only the production, distribution and consumption of goods then remain.

Then, when we have such an economic process before us, we will be able to demand that there must be a liquidation government. This government then says to itself: Well, I have to exist for a while because the old order must continue. But I must at most retain only something like a Ministry of Police, a Ministry of the Interior, and also a Ministry of Justice, which will establish the legal conditions through the corresponding democratic representation.

It is again a calumny when it is said that then only the legal scholars will prevail on the legal basis. No, the people will rule; there will be a real democracy that will expand. The government to the left and to the right must be a liquidation government that, on the one hand, transfers spiritual life to its own administration and, on the other hand, transfers economic life to its own administration. The liquidation government will have to take the initiative in such a way that it creates the free space for economic life, so that in the economic sphere, out of the forces that regulate the respective values of goods, that is, the prices necessary for the healthy maintenance of life, a real socialization can occur.

You see, I know, of course, that when I explain something like this, people always say from the most diverse points of view: Yes, he expresses himself so vaguely. — I would just like to know how someone should express themselves definitively about something that is an infinite area. One can only point out what actually underlies things. But I always have the hope that precisely those who, out of their life's struggles, have acquired a certain inner sense of the truth of this matter, would like to see that what is presented here is based on a really thorough insight into the entire process of production and consumption. And only from such an insight can one proceed to action. That alone is therefore the truly practical thing, while those who always make the laws or design institutions in such a way that one hole is closed and another is opened as a result are not practical people.

You can set up an economic enterprise quite nicely if you leave it capitalist, that is, leave the whole economy capitalist. Then it may be possible in the individual economic enterprises that even what is so beautifully called a full labor yield comes about for the worker, but that no more surplus value is generated. Walther Rathenau will come and say: the surplus value is there for nothing other than for the reserve, that is, for the continuous improvement of the means of production and the expansion of the business. Everything that is generated in surplus value goes back into the business. I would just like to know how those who do not work but receive royalties or the like live when everything goes back into the business. Well, you can let such people talk. But something else is much more important.

Let us assume that the entire surplus value is simply distributed among the workers. Do you think that if the old capitalist order remained and if the surplus value were distributed among the workers in a company, that there would be no need to work for surplus value? You can still make a profit if you do not socialize the economy. In that case, it is not subtracted from the workers' wages, but the consumer has to pay it. It is not important that no surplus value is generated, but that the producer does not pay for it... the consumer has to pay for it. But who is that? The worker again. So if you add the surplus value to your wages, you in turn have to pay for what you have earned as a consumer. You plug one hole, but open another.

You can never escape this unnatural economic cycle unless you eliminate the fifth wheel, which is only there to enable people who have not worked to make a profit. This fifth wheel is called capital. And you cannot get out of this cycle if you do not establish a direct relationship between the means of production and the intellectual worker on the one hand and the physical worker on the other. If you do not want this, if you do not throw out this fifth wheel on the wagon, which only serves those who do not work, then you will not achieve socialization.

As you will find, the main thing described in my book is that it really strives to eliminate what capital is from economic life and what is a forced relationship of work. This cannot be done otherwise than by creating a legal basis on which labor is regulated independently of economic life, and by creating a spiritual basis on which human individual abilities are regulated independently of economic life. Then they will flow into economic life in the right way.

Those who understand this will not be very impressed when people come and say: Yes, you want to destroy the unity of social life by dividing it into three parts. No, I want to establish precisely this unity, and those people who speak of dividing this unity, like the foolish writer of an article in yesterday's Süddeutsche Zeitung, believe that I want to cut up a horse. I don't want to cut up the horse, but they believe that if I don't put it on a single foot, I will cut it up. What matters to people is that the horse is only a unit when it stands on one leg. But the horse must stand on four legs. I do not want to cut up the social organism, but to place it on its three healthy legs. In doing so, I want to shape it straight into a whole. That is what matters.

Now I have again told you something about how things are to be understood, but from a different angle than I have usually said in lectures. I just wanted to introduce this evening, and I hope that now many of you will say something that can help us move forward this evening. We must move forward, especially with regard to a real dismantling of capitalism and a real dismantling of forced labor.

Discussion

Mr. Biel asks two questions: 1. Is democracy a necessity for the implementation of such a new form of economic life, or is it right, under certain circumstances, to use force if such a state of affairs cannot be brought about through democracy? Can violence in this case also be a right? — 2. Is this threefold division or socialization possible without taking into account international conditions, that is, without all culturally developed peoples coming onto the scene at the same time with the same ideas and demands?

Rudolf Steiner: Regarding the question of whether democracy is a necessity for the implementation of real socialization, I would like to say the following: In a sense, it is true that so far a majority of people have not been able to warm to new ideas, but, as the previous speaker has already said, only small groups have done so. But on this point in particular, we must realize that today we are not on the threshold of a small reckoning of world history, but of a great one. Many things must change, and they will only change if we are willing to strive for something different, especially with regard to the most important issues, from what has existed so far. Those who today not only look back at the practices of earlier times, but can see today what people want, will take into account the most diverse real factors.

For example, the previous speaker said that a small group of people drove humanity into the world war. Well, I will be publishing a small brochure in the next few days about the outbreak of the First World War, which will show how small the number of those was who, for example, were behind it on the German side. This small group worked in a way that was completely out of touch with the circumstances of the time. They simply carried the old conditions into the present. In terms of attitude, not with the technical means, it would not have been possible to govern in Berlin as it was done if, for example, the art of printing had not existed, through which education and the ability to judge were carried into the broadest masses. But did not this catastrophe of the world wars really bring about the downfall of that which had simply continued to be managed? |

Today we are on a different footing, and today people are not so that they want to let small groups dictate to them what they have to do, and that they just want to exchange one small group for another. Today everyone wants to be involved. Today is the time to learn the difference between ruling and governing. It seems, however, that this difference has not yet been thoroughly enough recognized. The people must rule today; a government may only govern. That is what matters. And that is why democracy is necessary today in a healthy sense. That is why I have no hope that one can achieve anything with the most beautiful ideas if one wants to realize them through small groups and if one is not supported by the knowledge and insight of the real majority of the population. The most important task today is to win over the vast majority of the population for what has been recognized as a possibility for change. Thus, today we are faced with the necessity of having the majority of the population on our side in a democratic way for what will ultimately be truly achieved in terms of socialization.

Of course, there could be transitional periods in which a small group would implement something that is not recognized by the majority. But that would only be short-lived. On this point in particular, it must be made clear that even today the time has come when, through democratization, people are to be regarded as equals, and therefore we must create the conditions in which all people can be equal in their judgment, which we must detach from that in which people cannot be equal in their judgment. Just imagine if some child at school is particularly talented at learning arithmetic and you want to make a musician out of him, then by training the child wrongly you are depriving the social life of a very special strength. The healthy development of individuality must be nurtured precisely in the social organism. You cannot democratize there, you can only apply the insight into the real knowledge of human nature. Something completely new must be introduced into the field of education and teaching.

And in economic life, do you want to make democratic decisions? For example, how to make boots or valves? Here, based on factual knowledge, corporations must be formed in relation to production and consumption; here, objective interests must be decisive. The purely factual interests must be separated to the left and to the right, and then the ground of democracy remains in the middle, on which nothing else comes into consideration than what every mature, fully developed person has to demand from every mature, fully developed person as an equal, and from where law then radiates into the spiritual and economic life. Precisely because the call for democracy is so justified today, we must recognize how democracy can be carried out. That was not necessary in capitalist society. There, too, people called themselves democrats, but it was not yet necessary to approach the concept of democracy as thoroughly as it is today. Today we have reached the point where we have to ask ourselves: Because democracy must come, how can we realize it in practice? The answer must be: only by basing it on its own foundations, and what cannot be administered democratically, what cannot be judged by all people, that is separated factually to the left and right.

It is so easy to understand why this tripartite social organism is necessary that one must actually always be surprised that people have so much against it. If they ask who is open and honest about democracy, for example, it is precisely the tripartite social organism, because it seeks to find out how to realize democracy and does not want to mix and confuse everything, so that there can be no democracy in the unitary state. Of course, those who always shout “For throne and altar!” have not made democracy. But, my dear attendees, they will not make democracy either, who put the office in place of the throne and the cash register in place of the altar. Democracy will only be made by those who are sincere about human society and do not want to carry the democratic to where expertise can be the only thing that matters. Therefore, people will have to come to terms with the fact that, as reasonable socialists have always said, there must be factual administrations in the future and no sham administrations through elections and the like. Of course, there must be elections, but beyond the technique of voting, one will have to learn other things than one already knows today. I just want to point out: Democracy must come, but we must have a social organism of such a kind that it thoroughly makes democracy possible.

As for international relations, I will just say that, while this world war was raging, it was precisely because of the internationality of this threefold order that I established it, because I saw only in the threefold order a remedy for somehow emerging from the terrible devastation and devastation of this world war. For if you have been an attentive observer for decades, you clearly recognized that this modern catastrophe, the greatest in world history, which, by the way, is far from over, was bound to happen as a result of the mixing up of everything possible.

Let us illustrate the story with a single phenomenon, the Baghdad Railway question. You may know that the Baghdad Railway question played a major role in the events that led to the First World War. Anyone who studies the negotiations in connection with the Baghdad Railway question knows how intertwined the economic interests of capitalist imperialism or capitalisms and national, chauvinistic, state, and legal prejudices are. For example, a certain German financial consortium thought it had the matter in the bag because it had attracted certain people in England, also financial consortia, that is to say people steeped in capital-economic interests. Then the state dimension emerged and confused everything so much that the English dropped out again. Then the French dropped out for the same reasons. Then again it was against German national interests, and so it went through the whole negotiations. Those who know real life know that in modern life the three spheres of life, intellectual life, to which national life also belongs, economic life and state or legal life, have become increasingly intertwined.

You see, when I came to Vienna during this world war – people judged this world war and their fate in it from the most diverse points of view – some people told me: This whole war is a pig war. – Not condemning, but characterizing, they wanted to express that one of the most important causes was that Hungary refused to let the Serbian pigs be imported. Thus it was a purely economic matter that became entangled with national, that is, spiritual issues. Thus various cauldrons were formed in which what then became a world war was brewed: all kinds of legal, extra-legal, class-legal and similar issues. Therefore, anyone who looks at the international situation must point out that the only hope for the future is to separate the three areas of life so that a three-part social organism is formed. Then the individual areas will support each other, then one will point to the other.

Sometimes people are so stubborn that it is amazing. You see, I once spoke to a person who is a legal scholar and even a ministerial director, and I pointed out to him that if the social organism is tripartite, conflicts can no longer arise at the borders because one does not interfere with the other. I said that state conflicts do not arise so quickly from economic conflicts if everything is not mixed up. Good economic relations, for example, will help with state conflicts and the like. Yes, he said, but if you implement that, then you are going against something that has always been in history, namely that the most important wars in history are actually wars over raw materials. If you want to introduce that, you are eliminating the raw material conflicts from the world, and it is our experience that these raw material conflicts have always been there. I had to answer: Yes, if you had wanted to give me confirmation that I am right, then it would make sense to me. That you tell me it as a refutation, I cannot understand. That is how people are today. When they think straight and naturally, they cannot bring themselves to accept it, because people's ideas have already been distorted.

So, with regard to the international as such, it was precisely the threefold order that was thought of first. It is the basis for a real socialization of international life as well. But it has another special feature. It does no harm at all if one social organism becomes threefold and the others do not yet want to become threefold. If the others are not yet ready, those who have introduced the threefold structure can enjoy the benefits of the threefold organism. Outwardly, if it should hinder them, they can of course act as one. If there are three parliaments, they can join together in negotiations with foreign countries because the others will not yet allow it otherwise. But they will still be ahead of the others because they are realizing the threefold order in their own area. That is precisely the important thing: not to think that you want to revolutionize the whole world, but to start in a particular area. Then it will be - and I am quite sure of this - very contagious when truly salutary conditions arise in an area. That will have a very contagious effect. And that is precisely what will contribute to internationalization. We just have to think practically. The only thing that could happen now is that the Entente would prevent us from introducing these blessings so that we cannot set an example. But we must show courage and drive in what we are able to create. Perhaps it is precisely through something like this that we will be able to fight against the strong capitalist-imperialist powers.

Discussion participant Mittwich asks: 1. How will it be possible to tax people in the socialist economy in the future? - 2. How will we socialize?

Rudolf Steiner: By pointing out the importance of democratization in the transition period, I do not think that the two previous speakers have really presented anything different from what I have said. Of course, misunderstandings could arise in one circle or another, but nothing really different from what I have said has actually been presented.

You see, you have to see this as a basis for the whole impulse of threefolding, namely that it aims at reality everywhere, that it does not theorize at all. In fact, if I may express myself somewhat paradoxically, what is written in my book about the social question is not so important as what happens when one sets about realizing what is written there. There people will notice that all kinds of things come out that they had no idea of before, precisely the things that are unconsciously demanded today by the truly working and productive people. And in a special case this is the case with democracy. Of course, for the transition period a very important question will be this: If we now really get a sufficient majority, and I consider that the only healthy one, because nothing can be maintained in the long run with small groups, if we get a sufficient majority for something that can really be carried out practically, then of course the question arises from the actual circumstances in question, it can only come from them: How do you then, more or less clearly, compliment — you know what I mean by that — those whom you wish were no longer in power? This is, of course, a significant transitional question, and I believe that if there is a real relative majority – I would even say a sufficient majority, it just depends on there being a number of people who can tip the scales and carry the matter, who are there out of conviction, out of insight and not out of following, not out of authority – then there will also be a way in which the new can be achieved.

But, you see, the question, which Mr. Mittwich has discussed very nicely here, does not seem to me to have been dealt with in a completely practical way, especially when I imagine that things are supposed to happen in space and not in our heads, not in our thoughts. Mr. Mittwich was right to say: when it comes to the fateful questions of Germany, when it comes to the big, serious questions of the present, only those who are productive workers, who are in some way truly productively active, should have a say. I fully agree. But you see, human society would be in a bad way if the majority of people were not productive, if they were inactive. The majority are already productively active. And if we only had all those who were productively active, if they really formed a majority, then we would be fine. Then those who are productively inactive would be in a strong minority: the parasites of society.

Now the thing about the tripartite organism is that only the productive workers, that is, those who really produce something and mean something to society, will certainly appropriate what is in its impulses. When they appropriate it, we can rely on these people, and the minority who do not appropriate it do not come into consideration. By accepting what is really reasonable, we will in practice get a majority that can be relied on. So I think that if it is accepted, the matter itself will ensure that the majority of those who are productively active will assert themselves. But how you want to push something through without being able to rely on the majority of those who are productively active, I don't see that in practice yet. It is not enough to demand that only the productive workers should share in the fate of Germany. The question only becomes practical when one considers how the productive workers alone can form a majority. The parasites will be weeded out if we can adhere to the tripartite social organism. Because that will bring about a real socialization, and those who are unproductive social parasites – you can be quite sure of that – will not be able to find any taste in this socialization. They will have to fall back into inactivity – well, they are already in there – but also into inactivity in terms of their vote and so on.

It is true that, economically, capitalism can be used to exert pressure, as I have sufficiently explained. But this compulsion ceases to exist when we render it harmless by ensuring the dismantling of capitalism. That is why I actually cannot understand how people constantly mix up what is appropriate for the present and what is appropriate for the time to come, which must really be just around the corner, because we do not have much time. For the present, one can indeed speak of the fact that the capitalists can strangle us, but we want to prevent them from doing that. So we cannot imagine conditions that we want to eliminate. Therefore, it is not correct to object that the capitalists will have the power. They will not have it if we move forward as the three-part social organism indicates. It will be taken from them. And finally, for those who take a closer look today, the question arises like this: Is capital, as such, really so extraordinarily powerful today, mainly as economic power over wide areas?

You see, I'll try to make something clear to you with a comparison. I once knew a family that had a really big dog. And suddenly, after the woman of the family had looked at this dog very thoughtfully for a long time, she came up with a strange idea. She said that if this dog were suddenly to become aware of its strength and were to use it, then it could tear us all apart. But it is so tame, and we are only saved because it has become accustomed to tameness. — You see, a great deal of the power of old capitalism has already been undermined. People just don't think about how much has already been undermined, how much is only maintained in appearance today by the fact that the old conditions are being propagated. Yes, you see, if after the German Revolution – don't get me wrong, comparisons are always misleading, the comparison is only meant to express the balance of power – those who came up afterwards had produced within themselves the awareness of the power that lies in the bulldog, if they had not allowed themselves to be hypnotized by muddling through in old ways, then we would have come further today.

Now, it is not always easy to answer specific questions, especially when it comes to practical people. I will tell you why. The specific questions are to be answered differently depending on the circumstances. Things can be handled in very different ways, and it is not always necessary to do them in the same way. The programmatic person, the theorist, is usually so clever that he thinks up a socialist program down to the last detail. There have always been such people. But that is not the point, but rather to show how the ground must be shaped so that people can socialize themselves, so that they come together in socializing.

I must always emphasize: I do not feel smarter than others with regard to the details, but I am trying to give suggestions as to how each person can bring out what can contribute to socialization. Therefore, I want people to place themselves on three levels. After all, people will not be divided into classes, but they will all be within each area. And it is people who will form the unity. Therefore, I would like to join the community of ideas in such a way that socialization can really be brought about by the people. Then, under the new conditions, we will also find a fair system of taxation. We must not forget: we cannot find a just principle for taxation from today's wealth statistics, since we are working to place them on a completely different footing. All these things, such as income tax, consumption tax and so on, will be placed on a completely different footing in the future. Read my writing on the social question. There you will see that many things will indeed be quite different in the future. For example, the family man is in the social organism in a completely different way than the single person, and that is because, if the constitutional state really develops as I assume, then every child has the right to an education. Then the situation is not that the family man has to distribute his meager wages among a large family, while the single person can use it all for himself. The circumstances will be quite different. [Interjection: And the other consumer goods?] The right to consumer goods is a matter of course. This is ensured by the fact that the economic process is a real one. Everyone who produces something will, simply through the economic process, have the opportunity to procure the consumer goods, which is much more certain than an abstract right. The aim of the emancipation of economic life is to have enough. Needs are better met if you have a right to consumer goods and thus enough in your wallet. That is the aspect concerning the right to consumer goods. In reality, it is not really important if one is really thinking about realizing the threefold social organism. Then, in fact, what is produced is what really equates one person with another from a certain age onwards.

Isn't it true that, in a truly socialized community, income as such need not be the determining factor for what one can consume. For it is quite possible that a person, by performing some kind of, well, let's call it quality work, may appear to earn more than another in a socialist community; but that does not mean that he has more for his consumption than another; he must spend it in the appropriate way. It is not a matter of keeping this concept of income and consumption in mind in the future, but rather of ensuring that - because one person will be economically fair in relation to another - it will be possible in the future to even eliminate the state as a tax collector from the economic process.

You see, one concept will have to disappear completely in the future: the concept of legal personality, including economic-legal personality. What is to be paid in taxes will actually be paid by individual people, because in the state, in the democratic state, on the ground on which the law is to live, the individual human being faces the individual human being. Human beings can only be equal when one human being is face to face with another. In the sphere of economic life and in the sphere of intellectual life there must be corporations. In the sphere of the state there can only be law, which is the same for all human beings, and which every adult can understand. The corollary of this, however, is that every private person, every individual, is only the bearer of the tax. This can be proportioned so that injustice never occurs, but this proportionality will not be necessary if there is real equality among people. The tax issue will then be something completely different. Therefore, the things that are at stake and that can be asked about today apply more to the transitional stage. Often, things have to be done that are not permanent. Of course, the aim is to gradually create the conditions for taxing the individual, not for taxing complexes [...] Of course, a consumption tax must also be created, by which I do not mean indirect taxes, which are unfair. So, a consumption tax must be created, that is, those who consume a lot of money must, of course, be taxed more than those who do not consume much, because if someone puts the money in the straw bag, it has no significance for social life. It only acquires significance when it is spent.

These are, of course, very specific questions, which today, because they are very specific practical questions, can basically only be answered insufficiently, because the institutions in the transition stage cannot yet be good either. If we can find a way of thinking that makes it possible to distribute fairly what is due to the state, we will also find a way to tax those who today still have a large income more than those who have less. And what Mr. Mittwich said about the future can only be realized when everything that can be created through the threefold social order is in place.

A very real question is how to think about implementing socialization. Some say it can only be achieved by increasing production. Yes, but there are many other things to be considered. In this regard, there is still a lack of clarity in contemporary humanity. You see, I once said in a lecture – I think to Daimler workers – that the peculiar thing about the more recent development of humanity is that, due to machines, the number of workers on the whole earth does not correspond to the number of people given in the encyclopedia as the population of the earth. It says there are about 1500 million people, but in reality, if we count the working population, there are 2000 million, so 500 million more. That is a curious fact. Of course, I am not saying that ghosts are walking around, who would not work even if they were walking around, but that is so because we have machines and can compare what is produced economically using machines, for example, in contrast to the Orient, where there are not yet so many machines, where man does more by hand. This makes it possible to calculate that the increased output resulting from the use of machines throughout the world is equivalent to 500 million people. Imagine how much labor and productive power could be saved if this were actually utilized in a sensible way. But strangely enough, I was met with the following response: Yes, I had said quite correctly that through the machine there are 500 million imaginary people, so 500 million more than in reality, so that the work is done by 2,000 million people, but on the other hand, people's needs have increased during the machine age and the same is true as before. That is an objection that one hears very often, that simply when the productive power is increased, needs also increase. One hole is closed, another opens. But in reality it is different. It is the case that everything must be taken into account that can lead to rationalization, to the proper design of the production process. Those who only think that the production process must be increased will not get it right – and that is: a proper balance between consumption and production, not the greatest possible increase in production. That does not lead to what must be striven for, that is, to a pricing system that really creates decent living conditions for all people.

What is necessary, in particular, is that in production, the kind of mistakes that have been made, let's say, in Germany, are not made. One of them – and there have been many – is that in the years long before the outbreak of the World War, twice as much coal was used for German industry as would have been necessary. So many resources were wasted, which could have been used for something completely different. What matters most is that we have people in the economic process who are up to the current situation. But we don't have them. People may be able to think very advanced on a large scale, but we don't have any real economic leaders. The economic process is not really organized at all in the way it should be, because people have no idea how important it is not to squander productive forces unnecessarily.

I have often used a grotesque example in these lectures. It is not uncommon today for a young badger to have to write his doctoral thesis after graduating from university. I will give you a concrete example. A young person was given the task by his professor to write his doctoral thesis on the commas in Homer - which, by the way, do not exist. This is, of course, a thesis that does not contribute the slightest thing to the social process. People who are hypnotized by scientific thinking take offense when you say something like that. But this matter must be viewed in an economic light. From an economic point of view, it is taken into account that this young man needs a year and a half for the work. During this time, he must eat, drink and dress. The fact that he can do this means that so-and-so many people have to work to provide him with food and drink, but he squanders his productive power and does nothing for society. Through what people call “free independent science,” he becomes a parasite on social life. This is just one example. But there are many such things in our production process, in our whole social life, where one can be very hardworking but ultimately unproductive. This raises the question: how do we find this out? We cannot find out without placing the spiritual life on its own ground. Is it on its own ground today? Wherever it is attacked, you can feel the unhealthy ground. Where do the numerous people come from who are let loose on the working population and who are supposed to lead or govern those who work?

In my lectures, I have often used the example of a certain government councilor Kolb. This Mr. Kolb did not do as many others do, who retire after a certain time, but went to America and worked there among the workers, first in a bicycle factory, then in a brewery. Then he wrote a book: “As a Worker in America”. In this book you can read the following beautiful sentence: “Earlier, when I saw a person on the street who was not working, I thought: Why isn't this bum working?” Today I see the matter quite differently. Today I know that the uncomfortable things in life look quite comfortable in the study. — Well, you see, this person has made it to the level of a senior government official. He has certainly studied in our present-day intellectual workshops, but he had no idea of life, no idea of work. And today, life is run by people like that! One has no idea how much our living conditions depend on such things! But must not these conditions be unhealthy? Yes, I only ask you to consider that man really depends on his thoughts. What is in the mind is not indifferent, it is contagious, it infects the whole person, especially when it comes to people during the developmental years. And now I want to tell you something: Do today's teaching institutions ensure that people are educated who then understand something about life, on the ground of which the work takes place? No, the circumstances are quite different. And in the minds of those who are released from our teaching institutions today, what kind of thoughts live in them? The thoughts that people absorb through the Greek language, for example, live in them. But a language is the clearest mirror of external life. Grammar, word formation, even intonation and everything else is taken from life. The Greek language, when I immerse myself in it, makes me able to find my way into Greek life. In those days, only those who pursued politics or art or science or perhaps managed agriculture could be free. All the rest were unfree. Everything is geared to this when one takes in Greek. People who come out of the teaching institutions today come out with thoughts that can only be applied to a social order in which only a few people are free and most are unfree. People do not notice what is happening unconsciously, what is flowing into them. That is why intellectual life must be freed, so that we do not have capitalists and their servants as intellectual leaders, but so that intellectual leadership is in line with economic life. Isn't it absurd – we are talking about the 'great reckoning' here – isn't it absurd that our intellectual leaders do not do things the way the Greeks did? The Greeks learned for their lives in their educational institutions. You can criticize that today as you like, but that was life back then. Today, life must not be that! But we do not learn what is necessary for our lives; instead, we let our youth learn what was for ancient Greece.

Yes, you see, people today still do not think about these basics for healthy socialization. But this is necessary, especially when we are talking about the proper organization of production, which is quite complicated today. So today we have to learn to understand, for example, how large a production plant can be. Because, you see, what Mr. Mittwich said applies to a production plant that is too small. Of course it cannot survive because it belongs to an old economic order. But we must not let the production plants become too large for purely economic reasons, and this is why: too small plants - I must express this as an economic law today - too small plants will lead in the future to those who work in them starving to death. Too large plants will cause those who are supposed to buy what is produced in these plants to starve. The production plant must have a very definite size, and this size will only be able to be determined when in the future, through the people who understand something, a right balance between consumption and production is created. The interests of consumption are always such that they want to expand. You will always see that consumption cooperatives have an interest in becoming large. Production cooperatives always want to become smaller. The right balance is created by what production and consumption achieve together. Then such enterprises will come into being that will have a size that is appropriate for the spiritually active person to work for the benefit of the physically working person, and from this will come a natural prosperity that will ensure a dignified existence for the broad masses.

So, as you can see, it is not that simple. It is necessary to realize that it is unhealthy for someone to say that if all production is done by machines – as the gentleman told me at the time – then needs will also increase. It is a question of whether it is a healthy state of affairs if needs are allowed to increase, or whether we should not consider the possibility of relieving people of work so that they can find some rest. This can also contribute to the proper regulation of prices. People often fail to see the simplest things. I would like to give you an example: I once had a friendly argument with someone about scribbling on postcards. I said: I don't like writing postcards, because most of the time they are just a whim and actually unnecessary. And I believe that I can spare all the postmen who have to run up and down stairs from having to run up and down stairs. I want to spare them this work. The other one said: That's not right, because first of all, I'm happy when I can make someone else happy with the card. – Well, that was still tolerable. But then he said: Secondly, the current number of postmen will soon no longer be sufficient, and more will have to be hired. So someone will have bread again because I write a lot of postcards. – To that I said: But think about what you are actually saying now. Do you really believe that you can increase the amount of bread by even a single gram by employing people to carry picture postcards around? Carrying the cards around will not increase the amount of consumer goods needed for the same number of people! You have to distinguish between productive power, which just needs to be transformed into labor, and completely unproductive forces. And this horrible phrase, which is often used, that work must be created so that people can be employed, makes no sense at all when it comes to creating something completely unproductive.

So, it is important that, through sensible socialization, production is not simply increased blindly, but that a proper balance is struck between consumption and production. You see, it is so very necessary that we develop the good will today to educate ourselves about these things. Because if we continue to think in these dreadful terms, with which one thinks out of the capitalist order, then we will not get anywhere. One must always ask oneself: Is something still being thought in a capitalist way, or is it a realistic germinal idea for the future? Therefore, one must say to oneself: Today one must turn around a thought twice to be sure that it is a thought for the new structure and not a thought learned from what is ripe for the dismantling. That is what I wanted to say about the questions.

The following question was asked: Under the present circumstances, we can hardly get a majority for the threefold social order because not even the proletarians are united among themselves. What can be done to bring about this unity?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is one of those questions that always comes down to the fact that although one understands what is right, one imagines that for some reason it cannot be achieved. This question should not really be raised; it really gets you nowhere. The question must become a will question. I cannot express myself on this. You just have to do something. What we have recognized as being right must be carried from person to person. We must not ask ourselves: Will we win over the majority or not? but we must do everything to win that majority. Then we shall have done our duty, not only to ourselves but to all humanity. It must be a matter of will, not a mere theoretical question, such as: How can we get the majority? I say: We must have it! And therefore we must work to get it. It must be a matter of will. There is no other way.

Introductory words by Rudolf Steiner

Dear attendees, At our last meeting, we spoke at length about the threefold social organism, and I believe that you are essentially aware of what this threefold organism should consist of and that the only way to achieve real socialization lies in this threefold organism. Because, you see, at present the main thing is that no one really knows anything about the nature of socialization, especially not anyone who is still so influential today. This can best be seen from the laws that have been passed and that are supposed to be in the spirit of socialization. I am referring in particular to the law on works councils.

You may know that in Berlin, in particular, the word [...] was coined: “Socialization is marching!” — I don't think it's possible to say today that socialization is marching. It's not even plodding along! One might even be of the opinion that socialization is hiding. Well, in the future it will be important to really understand that the impulses of the threefold organism do not contain something utopian, something ideological, but that they contain the seeds of what can become deeds.

The essence of this threefold organism is that economic life, legal life and spiritual life are truly and distinctly set out. However, since we are in a transitional period, some kind of beginning must be found. As you can well see from the circumstances, this can be found today, initially in economic life, for the following reason: the proletarian is part of economic life, and the proletarian knows from what he has experienced in his body and soul the necessity of socialization. It can truly be said that apart from the proletarian, hardly anyone can form such a truly full and valid concept of what socialization is. Of course, some of the intellectuals can do so as well. And they can be counted on. But the point today is not for a few people to realize that this or that is right, but for as many people as possible to recognize what needs to be done and bring about a new social order that is truly social. Therefore, in my introduction today, I would like to say something about what is important for our progress in this matter. Further details can then emerge in the discussion, based on the questions that I hope will be asked by a large number of you. Therefore, in my introduction, I would just like to give a few very brief suggestions. What must happen, above all, is that we get people with whom socialization is possible. But these people must really be genuine representatives of the broad masses of the proletariat. They must, in a sense, have a mandate from these broad masses of the proletariat. Now, the impulse of the threefold social organism is so practical that it can be applied everywhere. You can start working from any point. Today, the question of works councils arises as a very important starting point. And we would like to discuss this question, about which you have already heard something from the previous speaker, in detail today.

When dealing with the question of works councils, it is now important that these works councils are initially, I would like to say, set up in such a way that they only arise from economic life. We must tackle the tripartite organism in such a way that we first do something really practical in one of the three links. Of course, something practical must then also be done in parallel in the other two links. We can only do something practical if we have first, so to speak, set up those people who are suited to work in a practical way. For this we need the works councils, which must emerge from the individual companies.

Now it so happens that these works councils can emerge from the individual companies in the most diverse ways. It is only necessary that the works councils that emerge from the individual companies have the absolute trust of the workers and, to a certain extent, as far as possible, also the trust of the intellectual workers of the company concerned. Therefore, it will be a matter of the actual workers of a company and those in the managerial positions who are really able to go along with it, initially setting up this works council based on the circumstances of the individual company. The circumstances can be very different in the most diverse companies. For example, in one factory the election or appointment – or whatever you want to call it – of a works council may be carried out in one way, and in another factory in a different way. The main thing remains that those who are appointed have the trust of the physical and intellectual workers in the respective factories.

But then we will only have the basis we need for practical work. These works councils will then exist as such and will form a works council. This works council must be clear about the fact that it must be the body from which the recovery of our economic life must initially emerge. Today it is not a matter of taking half-measures or quarter-measures, but of actually working from the ground up. This can only happen if we have people who are inclined to work from the ground up. Do not be beguiled by the idea that there are not enough educated people among the working class. This will prove to be the biggest mistake, perhaps even the biggest nonsense. Because it is not a matter of getting people with a specific technical education, but of getting people from the direct practice of economic life who have the trust of those who work in it. Then the rest will follow if there is real seriousness and goodwill to create something new from the ground up.

So once we have set up works councils in the individual companies, we will have a works council system. Then we need a plenary assembly of this works council system. And this works council system must, regardless of what is fabricated as a law on works councils by certain bodies, give itself a constitution based on the experiences of economic life. It must see itself as a primary assembly. This works council must negotiate the powers, the tasks, and the entire position of the works council itself. This can only be done by first discussing in this plenary assembly what actually needs to be done to restore our economic life. So it is not a matter of us now theorizing a lot about what the works councils have to do. That must arise from the plenary assembly of the works councils themselves.

Let us first state: you cannot socialize a single company. That is complete nonsense; you can only individualize companies. You can only socialize a closed economic area. Therefore, we do not need any general regulations on the functioning of works councils in individual companies, as is once again expressed in the laws, but we need an inter-company constitution of the works council. A fine works council over a closed economic area must be a whole. When this plenary assembly, this original assembly, has given itself a constitution, then it will be able to have an effect on the companies.

In a next step, a committee must then be elected from this plenary assembly of the works council, which could be called: works council director or central council of the works council. The election would have to be conducted according to an electoral system that in turn emerges entirely from the works council itself. Once this central council of the works council is in place, a significant step will have been taken. Because what we need in the future within the economic body is something like an economic representation or, if you like, if we want to use the old word, something like an economic ministry. These things cannot come about in any other way in the initial transition period than by seeking representation through the aforementioned assembly, the plenary assembly of the works council. And in order to have a basis for a socialist social order in the future, we must create a central office from this works council that is capable of forming what could be called a ministry of economics at any time. We must therefore prepare in this direction for what a truly appropriate administration of economic life from within the social society can be. If we do not work in this way, then the moment, which will surely come, when socialization is to be tackled, will catch us unprepared, and it must not catch us unprepared! That is a fundamental question today. The moment must not catch us unprepared. Those who have the power – and you see that this is a question of power, albeit a reasonable one – must know what they have to do. That was precisely the characteristic feature of November 9, that the people who came to the top did not know what to do. It must be ensured that the people are there who know what they have to do.

On various occasions, I have emphasized in my lectures that works councils alone are not enough today. Other councils will be needed as well. But that is not something we need to worry about today, because the point is that we first start to work practically at one point. The impulse for the threefold organism is not there to be used for further theorizing, but to move on, to move directly on to real practical work. The time when this practical work is needed need not be so far off. For if certain circles imagine today that with any peace agreement - some peace agreement must come about after all - an end would come, then that is complete nonsense. A peace agreement today does not put an end to it, but it marks the beginning of a period that we will have to go through and in which socialization must take place in the civilized world simply out of an inner necessity, but made by people.

We must take two things into account, and I would like to mention these two points in my introduction today. You see, in many gatherings – and I have now attended quite a few gatherings and discussions – capitalism is talked about in the same way as it was talked about before this world war catastrophe. Of course, all the evils of capitalism are just as valid today as they were before the war, but the fact of capitalism has become quite another as a result of this world war catastrophe. Consider only the conditions in Germany itself. Capitalism has indeed undergone a change through the war economy. The war economy has, in a sense, raised capitalism to its highest level. And it was able to do so because it was completely divorced from the real needs of the people, because it only produced for the war. But because capitalism has been driven into this crisis, because only unproductive things were created, the whole of capitalism has actually entered into a completely different relationship with the working class than was the case before. Today, capitalism is not in the same position as it was before the world war catastrophe. And what is actually at hand is that one should become aware that this capitalism no longer stands as such. For this capitalism, even if it is not so evident today, has simply ruined the economy of a large part of the civilized world, undermining it. It has already done so much to its own destruction that this destruction must come, not in “some time,” as was said earlier in socialist circles, not in “a distant future,” but in the immediate future, capitalism will point out to the civilized world that it was able to continue to work under the old regime and to enter into the relationship with the working class that you are so familiar with. But this relationship cannot be restored. That is why the question is so urgent today: what will the proletariat do at the moment when, as a result of capitalism's self-destruction, it is faced with the task of reshaping the world? Capitalism was able to continue operating under the old conditions. It can no longer do so. It cannot do so at all. It would lead to utter chaos and confusion if capitalism were to continue to operate in this way.

Let us assume that some kind of peace were to come about, even if those who now want to reject it do so. Something must come of it. But whatever comes of it, it could only be – and I ask you to bear this firmly in mind – that with the help of the not yet completely crushed Entente capitalism, Central and Eastern Europe would be trampled to death, because we would have enslavement as far as the Rhine, especially for the working people. That could only be if Entente capitalism were not crushed. For what might then happen? Any practical person can see that clearly. For the following would happen: Let us assume that peace were to be established, this peace, which is actually a peace of the already ruined capitalism of Central and Eastern Europe with the Entente capitalism, because the proletariat has not yet been called upon anywhere, despite the socialist government, to somehow participate in the fate of the world. Assuming that this peace is established, it would only make sense if the German proletariat were willing to rebuild capitalism by settling for a terribly low wage. If it accepted this terribly low wage, at which it would gradually starve, then German capitalism could rise again through this low wage, and it could be paid, so to speak, at the expense of the working class, what Entente capitalism demands. That is the one case.

The other case is that, which you probably will not believe, it occurs that, for example, the American and English proletariat decide to work as cheaply as possible, with the lowest possible wages, so that means of production can be supplied to Germany, which Germany can initially only pay for if the proletariat works almost for free. In either case, the German proletarian will find himself in a terrible situation. Only a genuine socialization, one that places social life on a completely different footing, can free him from this situation. If, as has often been stated, capitalism is removed from the social order in this way, then the peace, compromise or understanding that comes about cannot be something that is concluded between the capitalists of Central and Eastern Europe and the Western capitalists, but can only be something that emerges from a society that is becoming more and more socialist. And that alone can bring about healthy conditions in international relations. Because then it will be the case that, precisely as a result of the peace agreement, the Central and Eastern European capitalism, which is no longer on its feet, must actually withdraw from the scene. And that will have the consequence that capitalism can also be fought in a real way in the Entente states. Because if there is no capital in some place and yet productive life and productive power prevail, then one must approach such a productive economy in a completely different way than if one hopes that capitalism will regain its strength and pay war reparations or something similar. You see, I only say the latter so that you do not believe that something is being postponed to a distant future. It is about the very near future, it is about the fact that the time that begins with the necessary understanding between nations or with the conclusion of peace will either be the beginning of a terrible situation for the proletariat of Central and Eastern Europe or the beginning of a real socialization, which must arise out of your courage, your strength, and your insight into necessity. That is what I wanted to say beforehand.

I believe that we should talk about works councils today, but in such a way that it leads to real action, so that we do not just talk but see how the impulse for the threefold social order consists in the fact that it contains ideas that can be put into practice, that can become action.

Discussion

Debater Biel objects to the law on works councils proposed by the government and to an article in the newspaper about the coalition government.

Debater Lange asks: If the works councils are to be elected or appointed, has consideration been given to the fact that employees and directors, technical or commercial directors, should also have a say in the election? It is surely important that the laws or regulations that are made should really be made by people who have an overview of the whole context.

Rudolf Steiner: This question is extraordinarily important. The point is to bring about something that can work. Of course, in the present economic system, we cannot work without spiritual leaders. The economy would be driven into a dead end. Production would come to a standstill after a relatively short time if we could not win over the technical leaders for it. As you know, in Russia, due to the different circumstances – which it would be interesting to discuss at some point – it was not possible to win over the technical managers to the real idea of socialization, so that there one was faced with the fact was faced with the fact that on the one hand there was perhaps even a sufficiently large proletariat of manual laborers that could have taken up the idea of socialization, and on the other hand it was not possible to win over the masses of the so-called intellectual workers for the idea of socialization. The consequence of this was what must be most regretted for Russia: the sabotage of this intellectual labor. This sabotage of the intellectual workers must be avoided at all costs. That is to say, every effort must be made to overcome the obstacles within the intellectual workers. Let us not misjudge the serious obstacles that exist.

You see, I have already spoken about this here. We are faced with the fact that the proletariat has been politically educated to a certain degree through a long process of training. The proletariat is politically educated, even if this does not apply to every individual. Political education does not consist of knowing one or two details, but rather of having a certain basic disposition of the soul that is political. The proletariat has this, but those who belong to the circles of the so-called intellectual workers do not. These intellectual workers have become accustomed to cultivating what might be called a sense of authority. Whether this authority is a state authority or a factory authority is not decisive. What is important is to know that a deep sense of authority prevails in these circles. Of course, the individual may inwardly revolt, but mostly he does it with his fist in his pocket. But the intellectual workers are not dispensable for real socialization. That is why I say: It is necessary to win over the employees and also the plant managers and, above all, to win over those among them who have a sense and a heart for real socialization.

We must not let it come to the point where, when the time comes, a kind of Ministry of Economic Affairs is set up in such a way that? this ministry is forced to set up five or six or twelve armchairs as the top level, and the whole apparatus continues to work in the old spirit. But there is something else we must not let come to either. Mr. Biel has already given a good indication of what would be at stake if something like the works council system were to be included in this unfortunate law that is now being proposed. I have already told you that it is an essential fact that we are now at a point in time when capitalism has actually ruined itself and cannot rebuild itself from within. If a reconstruction is to happen, it must be done by the working people. The capitalists cannot continue. That is what proves that we must seize the moment. Such laws as the one that is to become reality are designed to help capitalism, which cannot help itself, to be nursed back to health with the help of the misled working class, and to regain its old dominance. The working class should form such works councils that, by the very nature of how they are set up, will help to resurrect capitalism. We can only counteract this if a works council is created from the bottom up by the working people themselves and gives itself a constitution, that is, if it does not concern itself with what basically wants to be a continuation of the old capitalism because it cannot imagine the world as anything other than capitalist.

We must be quite clear about the fact that our first task is to set up the works councils at all, and that we need the intellectual workers in these works councils as well, as far as possible. Those who have no sense or heart for socialization, we can't use there. It would hardly be a matter of having as many directors or top people in it as possible, but above all those who really have to do intellectual work. Then it is possible to accomplish something like socialization through such a works council. But if you endorse a law like the one currently being drafted, then you have done nothing more than rename the old labor committees. It is only a renaming, and of course – because the two cannot coexist – the old workers' committees are to be abolished. The old workers' committees were unable to eliminate capitalism, and the new works councils to be established under the law will not be able to do so either.

So, we must establish a works council as far as possible, and it must be able to run the factories by itself. We must not think only of agitation, but we must think of the practical work from which the enterprises can be newly shaped. It is not enough to advocate that production should be socialized, but it is important to know as precisely as possible how it should be socialized. This will happen when we really get the intellectual workers into the works councils. That must be our aim. Therefore, the apolitical attitude of intellectual workers must be eliminated. And we must not lose sight of what is being waited for today either. Today, under circumstances that the intellectual workers are perhaps sufficiently familiar with, the non-proletariat is waiting for not just any socialization to come about, but for the proletariat to be overcome. Do not forget, there are statements like that of a German industrial magnate who said: We big industrialists can wait, and we will wait, until the workers come to the gates of our factories and ask for work! This attitude is not uncommon. They are waiting to see if the workers will not let themselves be beaten. And that is what must be prevented by reality. That is what matters. This must also be borne in mind when considering the question of how to win over intellectual workers to our cause. At the beginning of what is to be revived as an act among us, there must first be the setting up of works councils, and secondly, as far as it is possible today, the intellectual workers must also be included.

A speaker asks: What do the works councils actually have to do? And what must be done in the very near future?

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to emphasize that what I have said is not for the near future, but for the very near future. I have already emphasized: today is not the time for us to think much about how to get well-educated works councils; instead, the first thing we need to do is set up the works councils and come to a plenary assembly of works councils. What is most necessary is that we have people from the business world itself who will then take it from there. Today, it cannot be about saying, with regard to individual situations, that the works councils have to do this or that, but rather, I see it as being very practical. Of course, among these works councils there will be some who already know how to proceed in this or that case with regard to socialization, while others will not know. But if there is real goodwill, it is not that difficult to identify the real tasks for the immediate future.

There are, of course, different approaches to the way forward. Let us assume, for a moment, that socialization cannot be limited to Stuttgart, so let us assume, for a moment, that it is limited to Württemberg. One approach would be to go around the whole country, going from workers' circle to workers' circle and talking to the individual groups about what is most necessary in terms of threefolding, where one is usually met with the reply: These are aims, but not ways! Although it is precisely intended to point to the right way. That would be the one way, because today we can achieve nothing without having a really large number of people on whom we can rely. But we do not have the time to go down this road, bearing in mind that it is not a matter of working for the immediate future, but for the very near future. So we have to think about the other way. We have to get those people, and that is what the works council wants to be, who, by having themselves elected or appointed as works council members, are fully committed to the work of socialization. Then I really don't imagine that it is so difficult to deal with such a cohesive body that has the trust of the broadest masses.

Once we have these works councils, the question of whether people already know exactly what they have to do is no longer so important. After eight days they will know. The only problem is finding the people. The problem today is not that it is terribly difficult to know what needs to be done first, but that there are so few people with the good will and desire to do what needs to be done. So, if we have those people who feel an inner responsibility to work on socialization because they have been elected by the trust of their colleagues, then we will have created the basis for the very next practical step.

As for the practical work that lies immediately ahead, let us not let ourselves be put off by saying: We must first educate. Those who say today: Socialization takes a long, long time, because every individual must first be educated. That is not the point. The point is to create a body of people who have the trust of their colleagues. Then it will be possible to continue working with them, and because they have a direct sense of responsibility, you will not constantly face the problem of having difficulty in reaching the masses. Because, you see, you can hold as many meetings as you like, there will always be some who have reservations about such meetings, such as: Today the sun is shining so beautifully, we are going for a walk, or: On Ascension Day it is not possible to attend a meeting — and so on. The work that lies ahead of us is enormous. We will not succeed if we proceed by educating each individual, so to speak. We must have responsible people who then take on the tasks completely. With them, the work can be carried out in the very near future.

Discussion speaker Mittwich proposes that the works council election be held separately for salaried employees and wage earners and that delegates be elected from each side.

Rudolf Steiner: I just want to say a few words, since I agree with everything essential that the esteemed previous speaker has said. But I would like to come back to an important question that he asked, namely the way in which the works council, which will of course consist of individual works council members, comes about. I also believe that the number he has given is sufficiently large for the individual companies. Of course, one or the other view can be gained from the different practical circumstances. But what I think is important is how this works council is set up in the first place. Don't think that when I said “by election or appointment” I meant an appointment from above or something similar. Rather, I was thinking, of course, of the fact that today, in the beginning, there are the most diverse conditions in the individual companies, and it is certainly very true that today there are numerous companies in which the workforce knows exactly: this is the right works council for us – where there is no need for long debates, but where it is clear simply from the trust: this is the right one. And I would like to point out the extraordinary importance of this existing trust being expressed in the election of the works council, so that the people who come into the works council are precisely those who have the trust of their co-workers. That would be similar to an appointment.

Of course, the election must be carried out in a practical and technical manner, but care should be taken to prevent the election from resulting in any kind of random composition. Only those personalities should be elected to the works council who have the trust of their employees. This is necessary because, above all, we need people who feel responsible for what they do. That is one thing.

The other thing is that I don't think it's right to ask how the number of works council members should be distributed between salaried employees and workers. I don't think it's possible to set up any kind of regulation today. I therefore fully agree with what the previous speaker said, namely that employees should not elect their works council on the one hand and workers their works council on the other, as this would lead to something monstrous. In that case, we would have an unworkable works council from the outset. Rather, it must be elected jointly by employees and workers as a unified body. And as to how many then come from the circle of employees on the one hand and on the other from the workers, we want to leave that to the election. It goes without saying that anyone who comes from the intellectual workers, for example, into the works council must be such a person who has the trust not only of the employees, but must also have the trust of the workers. The workers must accept him as an intellectual worker as well. So, for example, if in any enterprise, let us say, five manual workers and one intellectual worker are elected, it must also be possible for three intellectual and three manual workers to be elected elsewhere. It must be left entirely to the workers' own discretion. Intellectual and physical workers must elect those who are to be members of the works council as a unified group, based on their trust. In this primary election, every social distinction between intellectual and physical workers must be eliminated.

I cannot imagine that the one demand that we elect physical and mental workers together should lead to anything other than the fact that the person elected as a mental worker also has the trust of the entire workforce, regardless of whether they are a physical or mental worker. If we were to organize the election in such a way that we were forced to elect so-and-so many works council members from the ranks of the intellectual workers and so-and-so many from the physical labor force, then it would no longer be a free election based on trust. If we think that among the intellectual workers in the factories there are not so many who deserve trust, then people would be admitted to this primary assembly who are not needed! The election itself must not only be carried out in such a way that mental and physical laborers are considered without distinction, but that they have the power to elect together and elect together the one they want, and as many from one side or the other as they want. The mental laborers must be clear about the fact that they can only get into the works council if they have the trust of the entire labor force. This is the question that I consider to be of the utmost importance. I have come to this conclusion on the basis of my extensive experience. Today we must really make sure that the works councils are set up. In eight days' time, they will be in a position to provide a sound basis for socialization, stemming from the trust of the entire working class. Even if they are not completely ready, they will be ready enough to serve the purpose I have described.

Plenum: The assembly adopts a resolution containing the demand that works councils be set up everywhere as quickly as possible before the law, which is only a half-measure, comes into force.

Rudolf Steiner: I must confess that I cannot really connect the question, which arises very often: What means of power are available or do you want to give? I cannot really connect it to a practical sense. You see, it must be a matter of the works council, as I said before, really coming to form something in some central council or the like, which can really be a kind of economic ministry in an emancipated economic life. Now I ask: if it can be a real economic ministry, then only because it has the masses behind it. I would like to know who could resist such a central council or economic ministry if it had the masses behind it, if it had really emerged from the trust of the masses. By doing so, you give it power. Today, power can consist of nothing more than everyone wanting the same thing and having it carried out by individuals, so that there is really something behind such a ministry that makes it impossible for it to be shot down and the like, while at the same time enabling it to stand on firm ground, based on the trust of the broad masses. There is no other way to gain power. But this power is then there by itself, when the body is there. The question of what means of power I want to give such a body can only be seen as extraordinarily abstract. I don't know what people think about such a question. Do they think that regiments should be deployed or that proposals should be made to draft so-and-so many people so that when this body meets, it can function against the will of the others? I don't know what is behind such a question. Because if what comes into the works council comes from the trust of the masses, what happens then? Then the Central Council or the Ministry of Economic Affairs will be able to bring about real socialization, and the broad masses will then agree to it, because it is, after all, flesh of their flesh.

So, I think that by really putting something real on a healthy basis, power comes naturally. It did not come on November 9th because what was about to happen did not come from the trust of the masses and they did not know what to do up there either. All the other power is useless. There are no other means of power than those that lie in the matter itself. That is why I have always regarded it as a highly peculiar, quite abstract philosophical question when people today say: You tell us nothing about the way to get power. That is precisely the way to power: to find representation based on trust and then to shape that representation in such a way that it appeals to those who have given that representation their trust. That would be a practical way. Self-appointment and the like can only lead to the glory coming to an end soon.

In the way we are speaking today, we are discussing the question of power, and it would be a great mistake to lead the matter onto a side track by raising the question of what means of power should be given to those who already have the power because they came into their position on the basis of trust and not on some other basis. I ask you to bear this in mind, because I see confusion arising again and again over the weeks from the fact that on the one hand people say: Yes, that's all right. Such goals may be achieved one day, but first we need power. - We must gain power by placing ourselves with these objectives in the place where, when we go about implementing them, we actually win the understanding of the broadest masses. That is the way to real power, to real socialization. Any other way will lead to disappointment and to a repetition of what happened on November 9 and in the period that followed.

Radio commentator Funk asks: How should we act if the employers ignore or do not recognize the workers' councils?

Rudolf Steiner: Certainly, one can raise the question of how to deal with the matter when the works councils are in place and not recognized by the employers. But, you see, the way the matter has been presented to you this evening, everything possible has already been done to prevent such an eventuality. We do not think of this works council in such a way that it depends on whether the employer recognizes it or not. That is why this dreadful changeling of a works council should not be created, which is supposed to consist of the works councils in the individual companies in turn throwing dust in people's eyes, in order to reassure the workers by saying: We have works councils. We want a works council that extends across the entire economic area and from which a central power gradually emerges. This central power will be supported by the majority or, as I have repeatedly said, by the broad masses. Now I ask you: if this works council system leads to the establishment of a future economic government, what significance will the opposition of the various entrepreneurs have? These various entrepreneurs will simply be unhinged by this works council system as entrepreneurs! The works council system should do something. If it achieves its goal, it will no longer be confronted by the business community at all. Recently, I have often come across this in a wide variety of discussions: on the one hand, people want socialization, but on the other hand, they say, “Once we have socialized, what will the capitalists say?” Yes, if we get involved in this question, we will never achieve real socialization. But if we seriously tackle socialization, then the position of the capitalists is not important. That is precisely what “socialization” means: that in the future it will not depend on them, on the capitalists. They will be eliminated by not continuing to listen to the lies of individual works councils that are recognized by the capitalist authorities. We don't want to continue to work with them. That is why this law must be fought. We must actually take socialization seriously. If we take it seriously, then this question will fall away by itself. If the question, “What do the capitalists say?” continued to exist, then we would not have socialized. But we want to accomplish socialization! Therefore, we must not be discouraged by such questions, but we must gain clarity, must create a will in us that can take decisive action because it is based on healthy impulses. Then we just want to ask: How do we do it in order to push through this will without taking this or that into consideration? – and not: What could come? What do we want to do? – that is what matters.

Introductory words by Rudolf Steiner

Dear attendees,

In order to have a fruitful discussion about the establishment of workers' councils, I would like to say a few words to set the scene. I believe that it is essential to grasp the socialization task of the present time in the right way from the outset when setting up workers' councils. This means that, in setting up these works councils, we are carrying out a real socialization effort or, better said, making a real start on socialization. You know that the impulse for the threefold social order is intended to achieve what can lead to such a comprehensive real socialization. Now it must be said that the establishment of works councils in particular immediately shows how little understanding there still is today for the real social movement. Should not certain people, who mainly represent the interests of employers, think about how it has come about that today, in such a loud voice, precisely the working class is raising this call for socialization? When a specific issue arises, such as the question of works councils, then you immediately notice on this side, I mean on the side of those who represent the interests of the employers, how little understanding there actually is for such an institution. One can say: The resistance that comes from this side shows how difficult it will be to implement a true socialization rather than a false one. You have the leaflets in front of you, which were written at the suggestion of the Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism for the appointment of works councils.

Now, what do we hear from the other side, from the representatives of the employers' interests, in the face of what is expressed in these leaflets? You see, the first thing they say is: Yes, if it is as it is explained in this leaflet, then the workers are taking the law into their own hands! The people who speak in this way do not consider that basically the working class has only ever resorted to self-help when it was urgently necessary to do so!

In my lectures, I have explained on various occasions how the non-proletariat, how the ruling circles in modern times have missed every opportunity to respond sympathetically to the social movement. And I have also described how even the small crumbs given to the workers in the form of insurance, pensions or the regulation of working hours or the prohibition of child labor and the like, I have described how even this all only became possible because the workers resorted to self-help. Today, however, things are somewhat different. What I have just enumerated is rather a trifle in relation to the great task of socialization that is now at hand. In the past, the workers resorted to self-help in relation to trifles. But now there are bigger tasks to be tackled, which means that now, for once, we have to take a big task and take steps to achieve it by self-help. But in doing so, one must always bear in mind that, from the employers' point of view, the slogan “the workers are taking up self-help” always acts as a red rag. Because, you see, the employers are now once again striving to instill trust and a desire to work in the companies, even though they could have seen how unsuitable the representatives of the employers' interests are to justify this trust and this desire to work. It is precisely because of the way these leading circles have proceeded that trust and the desire to work have disappeared from the factories. And now they want to say: It is not for you, it is for us – when what is necessary for production and for social life is to be taken into the hands of those who have personally experienced the work of the employers.

They will know from the flyer and perhaps also from the last few meetings, if you were there, that it is important first of all that there are works councils, works councils that have really emerged from the totality of of all those who are involved in working and organizing in the economic life, and that it is important that the people who have been elected now also really have their say, can express themselves about what should happen. The old economic structures cannot simply be continued, but something new must be created from the very foundations. And we can only make progress by electing works councils in the individual companies today and then, emerging from a larger coherent economic area, say Württemberg, a general meeting of works councils is convened and that this then gives itself a constitution based on the experiences and knowledge of the works councils, thus defining what the works councils have to do and what their rights and duties are. In this way, what is necessary for economic life must arise today from economic life itself, from independent economic life. So something must first come into being through the works councils. We cannot create today, out of the old institutions, what should actually be achieved through the truly new works council.

You see, that should actually be the aim of the broadest sections of working people today: Through the trust that the person who is to be elected has in the company, through this trust he should be supported. And then he should unite with the works councils of a larger contiguous economic area, let's say Württemberg in this case, in order to determine and define the tasks of the works councils together with them. Today, that should be the view of the broadest circles of working humanity.

This is now contrasted with what is being demanded from the other side – to my amazement, however, also by very many circles of the working class. This is that, initially, in the old way, as it has always been done, a law should be passed by the old state that determines from the outset what rights and duties the works councils should have. If we proceed in this way, I believe that we will not only make no progress, but, in view of the times, we will even take quite a few steps backwards. We have clearly seen what might come from this quarter. What, then, are the demands that are coming from this side? For example, it is said that the state, the entrepreneur and the workers must get their money's worth. That the state, which today is still basically conceived as the protector of capitalism, should get its due, that can be sincerely meant. And I don't doubt that the entrepreneur should also get his rights. But what people mean by the fact that the worker can get his rights when they make such laws, I think that needs a closer look, because these people usually confuse the interests of the worker with how they can best use the worker in their own interests.

So these people come up with strange words, words that are basically always used to throw dust in people's eyes, a dust that usually has a very strange purpose. This dust is supposed to turn into a little gold when it falls back on those who scatter it. People say: the works councils must serve the whole, the whole of the state. They are not there to obtain advantages for the individual worker either, but to serve the flourishing of the whole enterprise. – Now I ask you what that actually means when one says something like, “the works councils should serve the flourishing of the whole enterprise”. That means nothing other than that what it is actually about is veiled in an abstract way. What are enterprises in the world for at all? They are there to provide something for people, and all people are individuals! Factories exist only to ensure that what is produced in them becomes a consumer good for individuals. And to speak of a flourishing of the factories in a different sense, as the individual coming to flourish through what is produced in the factories, that is not speaking from reality, but covering reality with smoke.

It always sounds so terribly beautiful when one says that the whole should be served. In the economic sphere this has no meaning, because: What is the whole there? It is the individuals all together! So one should not say “the flourishing of the companies”, but “the flourishing of all those who are involved in the companies and in the economy in general”. Then the matter would be presented correctly and the facts would not be covered up by deception.

You see, it is often said that the impulse for a tripartite social organism is an ideology. But in truth, this impulse wants to eliminate all the smoke and mirrors, which have not only been talked about enough but have been used in the service of oppression, and to replace them with the true reality, with the human being and their needs. Now you see, what are people demanding? The people demand that the powers of the works councils be regulated by experts after a thorough examination of the circumstances – that is what people always say when they don't want something – and the experts named are employers, employees and social politicians. Now, the concept of the employer – you can see it from my earlier lectures and also from my book on the social question – the concept of the employer, must actually disappear as such in a real socialization. For there can only be an employer if there is an owner of labor, and there must not be any owners of labor. There can only be directors of labor, that is, people who are active in the organization of labor in such a way that the physical worker also knows how to best use his or her labor power and the like. Of course, in a company, work cannot be done in such a way that everyone does what they want. There must be a management, the whole enterprise must be imbued with a spiritual purpose, but these are not employers, they are work managers, that is to say, workers of a different kind. The greatest importance must be attached to the fact that we must at last grasp the real concept of work, because an employer who does not work himself does not really belong to the enterprise at all, but is a parasite on the work.

People today have very strange ideas about these things. The day before yesterday I was in Tübingen, where I spoke to a meeting. There were also professors there, and you see, one of these professors seemed to be particularly upset by the fact that I said that the worker has now finally realized that the old wage relationship must end, because under this old wage relationship the worker has to sell his labor power as a commodity. Well, one of the professors then objected as follows: Is it really not humane to sell one's labor? What difference does it ultimately make whether the worker in the factory sells his labor or Caruso sings for an evening and gets 30,000 to 40,000 marks? Has he not also sold his labor? You see, people still have ideas like that today, and we still have to fight against them today!

But what is being demanded today? Employers, employees and social politicians should first consider what the works councils should do. Well, the social politicians are the very gentlemen who represent the similarity of the work of the factory worker and Caruso. These gentlemen should therefore have the most weighty vote. But the point today is that we should finally come to the conclusion that these people have cast their votes for long enough, and precisely by the way they have cast their votes, they have shown that they have no say in the matter. The social politicians can be dispensed with to a large extent. I am convinced that we can achieve something much more sensible if we elect shop stewards for the works council from among the workers in the factories, from among the physical and mental laborers, than if the social politicians get together, who have thoroughly proved that they can ruin everything but cannot build anything. And because this has been recognized, the impulse for the threefold order has, above all, realized that something can only come out of a general assembly of works councils. And if it were asked today who has a say in this, then I would say: above all, not those who still cling to the old concept of the employer, and not those who are theorizing social politicians, they had better stay out. There are people who then say: This requires detailed studies, as carried out by socialization committees. You see, a real socialization committee is exactly what the works council would like to have, one that arises from the real trust of the people. On the other hand, however, these people say that the most serious damage is to be expected from violent interventions by the works councils, which, without prior legal regulation, give themselves their powers and form a central council in the sense of the leaflet. It should be clear that perhaps serious damage to the old capitalism is to be expected, but that such damage will prove useful in the service of truly active humanity.

Then there is another phrase that is used again and again today and that is also used in employer circles, namely that the establishment of works councils can only fulfill its purpose through extensive education and training of the workforce and entrepreneurs. Yes, some of this kind of training has already been implemented. The purpose of this type of training is, after all, to prepare people thoroughly so that they can best serve the ruling classes, and not to teach them anything worthy of human beings. The aim of the training is to thoroughly expel from their minds everything they have learned through life and what they would like to express from their souls in view of the current conditions. The intention of establishing and strengthening the trust between employer and employee is associated with this training. As I said before, after doing everything to thoroughly eradicate this trust, it has been realized that this trust can be restored by training people in this trust. In this case, that means nothing more than training people to feel comfortable in the service of capitalism.

Something else must be taken into account, namely that the state also wants to profit from the working class. Recently, in the city where the headquarters of the highest intelligentsia in Württemberg is located, a professor of constitutional law said: Yes, we are heading for sad times. People will be very poor! —The gentleman may be right to some extent. But then he said: We will have large, large expenditures. How will these large expenditures be covered? The people will have no money to cover these expenditures. The state will have to step in to cover these expenses! — Now, ladies and gentlemen, I must say that this is a fundamental proof that, once and for all, the intellectual life must also be put on a different footing, when an outstanding representative of the intellectual life asserts today that the state must stand up for the poor so that it can pay the large expenses that we will incur. I would just like to know how the state can do this without first taking the money out of people's wallets? So one speaks of the state as if it were a real personality. If people were to talk about ghosts paying their debts today, they would naturally laugh at you as a foolish fellow. But this state, as it is spoken of, is nothing more than a ghost. After all, you can't get ahead in the real economy by printing one banknote after another, because these notes only have a value if they are redeemed through labor!

You see, people today also like to say: Until it has been determined, with the help of experts, what powers the works councils can have without destroying our seriously ill economic body, and until the laws to be created by the government have established the rights of the works councils, wildly elected – I emphasize wildly elected – works councils can only cause harm. Yes, these spontaneously elected works councils are supposed to be those works councils that are only set up by the trust of the working population. They are to be opposed to those who are placed in the factories by telling them: This you may do, this you may not do, this you must refrain from doing. Yes, of course this leads to nothing but the preservation of the old conditions. It does not lead forward, but a few steps back, because it was already a disaster when the economy was still flourishing that people thought of workers' committees in this way. Now that the economy is on the ground, it is an even greater disaster if the works council does not arise from the working population itself and if, when something like this occurs, it is said that it is a wild-grown humanity.

Well, after seeing what is to be planted by the other side, one must resort to the wild-growing ones. That will be the healthier, healthier than that which is to be planted in the ornamental gardens of those who so much want to remain stuck in the old conditions. I would like to mention another nice sentence that has also emerged in recent days against our efforts to elect works councils. Namely, various fears are expressed about these randomly elected works councils. Among other things, it is said that the one-sided exploitation of the companies by the workers contradicts the idea of socialization. But I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. I am racking my brain to come up with something to go with this sentence. What is meant by the workers' one-sided exploitation of the factories? You see, when the workers have their due share of responsibility for the factory, then they will know that if they do not take care of the factories on their own initiative, the factories will quickly be in such a state that they can no longer exploit them. One should not assume that the clever representatives of the business community expect the workers to be so foolish as to try to get everything out of the company, only to throw themselves out on the street afterwards. After all, the workers have learned well enough what it means to be put out on the street by others. I don't think that they will imitate this themselves, because they have seen enough of this practice with others.

And then the statement that the idea of socialization is being contradicted. Yes, socialization should be: calling for cooperation in the social order in the spiritual, legal and economic life of all those who, as working people, are involved in this life and who, as working people, are really at work. This is to be achieved by the working population electing the works council – as the gentlemen say – “wildly”. Well, that is supposed to contradict socialization. So I also agonize over the second half of that sentence and just can't figure out what is meant by it, because the fact that works councils are elected from among those who run the companies and ensure the prosperity of the entire economy is supposed to contradict socialization. Perhaps it could mean that those who work in the factories participate in the fructification, while those who previously only participated in the profits in various ways get a raw deal. That is to say, those who make their living purely from capitalism will fare badly. So I would have to interpret the sentence as meaning that the one-sided selection of works council members, as we want it, contradicts the eradication of the actual capitalists. Then I would have to think that in the mind of such a person the thought may arise that the eradication of private capitalism contradicts socialization. I can even imagine that some people understand socialization to mean that, by contradicting the interests of private capitalists, it is not a true socialization. But then we have to admit that we ourselves have to develop ideas about socialization, that we truly cannot let people impose on us the ideas of true socialization or of what contradicts this socialization. No matter how much we scream about laws, we will not gain a true concept of the works councils. That is why we must decide to create these works councils as a true concept of works councils, and not be deterred from doing so by the fact that we are opposing the wild-growing works councils to the ornamental gardens of the system of today's economic order. We must take courage and say to ourselves: From the institution of those works councils that we now establish through direct election – the details of which can be discussed later – a works council system should emerge that is now suitable for creating a basis for socialization. Then it may be that socialization will really march, whereas so far, only those people who are known to understand by real socialization a capitalist specter in a new form that is supposed to gorge itself with all sorts of parasites, talk about the march of socialization.

If we can penetrate this, then we will be able to ignite the courage within us to finally send this wild forest of works councils out into the world, so that not everything will be corrupted again by the ornamental plants of those who understand nothing about socializing.

Discussion

Fran Bühl: She distributed the flyer of the union about the creation of works councils in Calw and learned that the workers there show little interest in the creation of works councils. She therefore asks Dr. Rudolf Steiner to give a lecture there to shake people up a bit.

Mr. Armbruster is not satisfied with the course of events and, like the “Social Democrat”, finds Dr. Steiner's comments “soft as a plum”. He also finds that socialization is nothing new. He hopes that a new government will help.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the fact that the “Social Democrat” admitted that my remarks were “plum soft” did not mean anything to me at the time. I said to myself: There have been so many statements about all kinds of socialist and social programs that tasted like sour plums, so it doesn't seem so out of order to finally bring the plums to maturity; then, as everyone knows, they are soft.

But one thing that the previous speaker said is very close to my heart, because I believe that it is perhaps not so much directed at our intellect as at our will. It may be true to say that if, when the revolution occurred in 1918, people had spoken of threefolding and socialization in the way that is being attempted today, and had striven for them, we would be further ahead today. You see, I did not appear myself at the time, there were reasons for that, because I finally thought that the others, who had always been in the party, who had always been inside, could do it better, and I also waited to see if they could do it better. Now the honorable speaker before me has said that we have not actually achieved anything in particular. It may perhaps appear justified in the light of the facts that, after those on whom we relied have achieved nothing, we then get involved in the matter. What is important – if the previous speaker really means that we would be further ahead today if this had been tackled back then – is that we say to ourselves: Well, then we want to at least tackle it today, so that when we are again as many months after today as we are now after the revolution, we will find ourselves in the reality that we want today. So I would like to express this as an appeal for the will and courage to socialize. And here I do believe that we should rely a little on experience.

Please do not take it amiss if I say that the saying “When we have a new government, it will do it” has actually been heard again and again under the old regime. Yes, there is even a cute example where roughly every few months it was said: “When we have a new government, things will get better.” That was in Austria in the decades before the war. Every few months a new government was formed and relied on. But now we should have learned from the facts that we should not rely on any government in such a way. That is why the works council is to be created precisely for the purpose of enabling the broad masses of the working population to be creative with regard to socialization. It seems to me that one thing in particular – as I have said here before – has not yet been grasped, but should be, and that is that there is a difference between ruling and governing. In the future, the entire working population will have to rule. In the past, the people in power and the government were confused, because it was believed that the government should also rule. In the future, governments will have to learn to govern. To govern means to express what the working people actually want. This is a difference that must first be learned.

The new government has learned far too much from the old governments, which were governments of domination. It has appropriated far too much of what was always said before, namely that the government will do the right thing. I think that, with regard to the problem of socialization, a significant step forward will have to consist precisely in the fact that what the government does can be properly controlled by the people. The government will have to give its direction, so that one does not rely solely on ballots, but on real life, which basically points the government in the direction of its actions every day. But this will not be achieved if we always say: if we only have a new government, then things will go better, it will socialize. Rather, it is now time for every person to work towards socialization. That is precisely the meaning of our time, that every person feels that they must work together. And we must learn to understand that if we want to socialize, the first thing we must do is socialize domination. Domination must be socialized. It must not be continued in the old forms. Therefore, I do not want to hear any more talk about “the government will do it,” but I would be more satisfied if it were said by the broadest sections of the people: We will do it, even if not only the government but all the devils were against it.

A participant in the discussion reports that the clothing and maintenance office in Feuerbach is about to elect its works council. The commanding officer has expressed himself to the effect that he is not averse to the election of works councils, but must emphasize in advance that these works councils may only have an advisory vote and not a deciding one.

Rudolf Steiner: What the esteemed previous speaker has said is to be avoided by the special way in which the works council is meant here. Of course, if the works councils are to be set up in accordance with the law, which is to be made in the old spirit, they will of course be straw dolls. And so that not straw puppets arise, but real works councils, should, well, let's say, first these wildlings are elected against the plants of the others. And so it will not interest us particularly at first, when it is said: Well, I want to agree to the election of works councils, but they may only have an advisory vote.

We would like to see works councils in place to start with. And I said that we would then strive for the works councils to feel that they are a legislative assembly from which a kind of central economic council will then emerge, and that this will then take over the functions of those who currently want to create straw dolls. We want to arrive at a system of works councils precisely through this special approach and thus prevent this law from becoming reality. To do that, it is necessary that the workers really stand behind this subversion of the works councils. If the workers really stand behind it, there is no need to fear that some law that turns the works councils into straw dolls will be passed. That is what it all comes down to.

I must say that I was quite astonished the day before yesterday when I heard a very interesting personage, who spoke in favour of the socialization of all conditions, but kept saying, “Yes, but you have to bear in mind that now, finally, since November 1918, everything has been achieved. Württemberg has become a free people's state in which everything can be achieved. This People's State of Wuerttemberg will even give itself a wonderful school law, and it will also manage to get a law that properly establishes the works councils, and one should not tamper with the law. So it will be a matter of finally realizing that mere calls for power achieve nothing, but that this power must first be created. But how is it created? It will be created by people no longer believing in things as I have described them, but by more and more people coming together to perform a truly free deed. The power will consist precisely in people becoming more and more aware of this power of theirs. If they only ever talk about this power should come from this or that quarter, then this power will never be attained. This power will be attained when people become aware that they must act on the basis of their own understanding. When there are enough people who understand how to go from the working population to socialization, then I am not at all worried about power.

In a lengthy discussion, in which trade union issues are also touched upon, the speakers unanimously emphasize that, where this has not yet happened, works councils should be elected as quickly as possible despite the resistance of employers and the management of state-owned enterprises.

One speaker refers to the work of Professor Abbe of Jena, who, although under the favorable conditions of a monopoly operation, has done good preparatory work for socialization. He also refers to the ideas of Friedrich Naumann and Walther Rathenau.

Debater Grosshans, Heilbronn: Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Dr. Steiner's lecture, but I heard him speak in Heilbronn once. My 39-month imprisonment in Russia gives me cause to say a few words to you in order to explain my experiences of the various problems that the revolution in Russia has brought with it. When the Bolsheviks' second revolution began in Russia, it was the case that these Bolsheviks made the biggest mistake by chasing away all the technical management and all the officials. They wanted to take their fate into their own hands. I think this is right, but given that the situation in Russia is such that 60% of the population is illiterate, how can they be capable of running the factories themselves? Experience shows, then, that it was fundamentally wrong to chase away all the officials, technical managers, etc., and to want to take the fate into their own hands. In my opinion, these are the thoughts that Dr. Steiner probably presented to you this evening as well, according to which the aim should be to work towards the independence of the entire working population, in order to achieve the long-desired power of the working, the creative people.

What I would also like to discuss are the major mistakes that have been made in our country since November 9. I disapprove of the fact that the war with Russia is still being continued today, even at the behest of the Entente. But do not forget: if we had sought an alliance with Russia, the Entente would not be able to confront us as it is doing today. In Russia and Siberia, I myself have seen colossal quantities of coal lying on the surface, which do not even need to be mined, because they are on the surface. There are colossal copper mines on the Murmansk coast, as well as mercury and all the raw materials that we could so urgently need in Germany today. Furthermore, I saw how in Samara in the Volga valley, colossal grain stocks from 1912, 1913 and 1914 are still lying today, that is, in July 1917, they had not even been threshed. They were piled up in heaps as tall as a three-story house. If our government after the revolution – I don't want to go back to the old system, which has been swept away, because we don't need to devote any more words to it – if we had sought an alliance with Russia after the revolution, if we had worked towards an understanding with Russia, we would have different times today and would not be at the mercy and mercy of our enemies, whom we face powerless.

And I would like to add the following: When I look at what has happened in Germany since November 9, I come to the conclusion that it is high time that we came to an agreement. We, the entire working population, the manual laborers, the intellectual workers, the employees, must trust each other, must be able to rely on each other and not let ourselves be drawn into the party and union barriers again and again. I am convinced that a large number of our leaders have long since been overtaken by the new times. These proposals for socialization prove this to us. When we read through the individual paragraphs, we and our works councils are ultimately nothing more than a token. We may be works councils, but we have no rights; we are only there so that we can sit in the company.

In fact, if you look at this program of our government, it is well over 50 years old, and I believe that this program can no longer be our guide today. Therefore, I ask you, who are here today, to carry these ideals, which Dr. Steiner presented to us, out to the broad masses of the working people. See to it that we come to an understanding and that we introduce the works councils as quickly as possible, because time is pressing. It is high time that our economic life was finally uplifted for the benefit of the whole working people.

Rudolf Steiner: Our main task today was to discuss the importance and necessity of works councils, so that with these works councils we finally have the positive, the actual basis from which further work can be done. I can certainly understand when it is said here that it would have been desirable for us to have made significant progress today. Of course we all wanted that, but we needed this work in order to at least get to the point where we have now achieved the result that we can look more clearly towards the establishment of this works council. I think it is a great step forward that we have been able to tell so many of those present how far the matter has progressed, and that we have even dealt with the matter with regard to the elections and will deal with it even more in the near future. I believe that we can see from this how necessary it is, first of all, to prepare the ground for these works councils and at the same time to see that, if you only have the good will, you can really make progress with it.

There will be hard work associated with what I have called a kind of legislative assembly that arises from the works council, and it seems to me to be of particular importance that we do not harbor the illusion that we can anticipate anything to this primal assembly of the works council. The very issues that the gentleman from Heilbronn mentioned, in connection with the nature of the distribution of goods and the like, will be an essential part of the work of the assemblies that the workers' councils will have to hold. All these matters should be discussed there in terms of the basic conditions of our economic life, so that the appropriate foundations can be laid. I recognize that many good beginnings have been made, such as that of Professor Abbe. Many others have been made as well; in England, in particular, a wide range of experiments have been carried out. It has been rightly pointed out that Abbe was only able to achieve as much as he did because his business was of a very special nature. On the other hand, it has always been shown, precisely where the matter has been pursued further, that these things cannot, after all, lead to a certain end. And then one must raise the question: why is that so? Well, the reason is precisely that these things have been tackled again and again by well-meaning people, like Abbe, in a very individualistic way and not really socially. This is what I ask you not to underestimate and to fail to recognize: that we now really want to take the matter in a social way, that we actually want to create what is then tackled in individual companies, from the social sphere of the whole economy across a closed economic area. Württemberg would come into question here. Only then, when one has worked in this direction, which can probably happen relatively quickly with good will, then one will see how individual operations cannot actually be socialized at all, but that the socialization of the individual operation can only result from the socialization of a closed economic area. Only then will we have the opportunity to truly implement what socialism has always demanded, namely that production should not be for profit but for consumption.

You see, with today's structure of society, there is actually no other way to produce than with a view to profit. The principle of producing to consume must first be created! And whether ways can be found to distribute goods in a corresponding way will depend on this principle. It will depend a lot on finding, I would say, an economic unit cell over a large area.

This economic unit – I would like to say a few words about it – what is it? If we start not from production but from consumption, from the satisfaction of needs, then we must first arrive at a practical conclusion as to what leads to an appropriate pricing in terms of satisfying needs. Today, this is done in an anarchic and chaotic way by supply and demand, and that is why it is so impossible to get anything at all these days. The formula of supply and demand will not help us to achieve the goal of producing for consumption. No, to reach the goal, it is necessary that what I produce must be worth so much compared to other goods that I can exchange it, no matter how the exchange is organized, all those goods that satisfy my needs up to the point where I have produced a product the same as now. In this calculation, everything that one has to contribute for those who are currently unable to produce directly themselves must be included, i.e. for children who need to be educated, for those unable to work, and so on. So what we have to start from is to be clear about this economic unit. Only by doing so will it be possible to achieve a fair pricing system on an economic basis, so that in the future, when more is earned on the one hand, more does not have to be spent on the other, because things naturally become more expensive under the influence of the extra income.

Today, people still complain time and again that there is an unnatural relationship between the price of goods and wages. Socialization will have to solve the big problem of eliminating this difference between the price of goods and wages altogether, because wages as such must be eliminated, because in the future there must be no wage earners, but only free comrades, free collaborators of the spiritual worker, the spiritual leader, because the relationship between employee and employer in its present form must become an impossibility. Only when it is possible to eliminate everything that exists today and that contaminates the pricing process, only then will it be possible to achieve real socialization.

Today, people don't just buy goods, but rather, they buy goods, rights, and labor. You buy rights when you acquire land. The fact that land can be exchanged for production goods today creates an impossible situation, which is due to the fact that land is subject to the same pricing mechanisms as other goods on the general market. Furthermore, the means of production today also cost something after they have been completed. You know that in my book it is assumed that the means of production, when they are completed, are no longer for sale, but are to be introduced into society by other means. In the future, a means of production must only consume labor until it is finished.

If you ask today's economists: What is capital? you will get very different answers. The best economists are ultimately those who say: capital is produced means of production, that is, completely produced means of production that one can own and that can then be sold. Yes, precisely when you look at capital as corresponding to the produced means of production, then capital proves to be a fifth wheel on the wagon. You know that in my book I have listed as the basis for all future distribution of goods that in fact the means of production may only devour labor until it is completed. A locomotive, when it is finished, may only be brought into social circulation through measures other than purchase. We therefore need to be clear about the fact that, with regard to the means of production and land, completely different measures must be taken than have been taken so far. Only by doing this – and there is no other way – only by allowing the means of production to consume human labor only until they are finished, can we truly establish labor's rights. After all, what is money? Money is nothing. He who possesses a great deal would have nothing if he were not in a position, through the existing power relations, to cause so and so many people to do work for his money. They will no longer be able to do so if we set the prices of the means of production in such a way that these prices cease altogether when the means of production are ready. A further problem is that of the distribution of goods:

The gentleman who raised the issue of the distribution of goods must bear in mind that our entire distribution of goods has become one that is entirely in line with capitalism over the past three to four centuries and must therefore also be socialized. This can only happen when we have a primal assembly of people who are truly willing to develop the courage to develop new and necessary forms of pricing against all odds. It will be hard work, and it will be accomplished all the more quickly if we do not take the third step before the first, but decide to really take the first step. Today everything depends – and it is no small thing – on our first step being the formation of this workers' council. This workers' council should not draw up programs and the like, but should start by creating facts.

I just wanted to hint at how difficult the problem of the distribution of goods is. We will only overcome it when we have the foundations, and the foundations are the people who have the trust of their fellow human beings to come together as they have never come together in the world before, not to undertake small atomistic experiments, which are also called socialization, but to really socialize from the whole.

Various names have been mentioned, including that of Rathenau. The name Rathenau reminds me of something that is not at all unimportant for the present. Yesterday the latest issue of “Zukunft” was published, containing an essay by Walther Rathenau entitled “The End”. This essay “The End” is a perfect example of how the capitalist is truly at a loss when it comes to judging current events. Walther Rathenau is more sincere and, in a certain sense, more honest than the others, but he does not go any further than those who do not form their ideas out of social thinking but out of capitalist thinking. I would like to say: What Walther Rathenau says in this essay 'The End' is all too well founded. He says: Well, for a long time we have only heard what was false from all sides. Our first demand should be that people should not be told what is not true, but what is true. And he rightly asks: What if the current peace treaty is not signed? Well, then another one will be made, and then another. But what if it is signed after all? Rathenau says: Rantzau can then do nothing but declare the National Assembly dissolved; he can declare that it no longer makes sense for Germany to have a president, a chancellor, and so on. So there is nothing he can do but place all the sovereign rights of the former German Empire in the hands of the Entente and ask them to take care of the 60 million people in Germany. Yes, that is the truth from this point of view. It is the truth that those people who have steered the destiny of the country so far are now at the end of their tether with regard to Central Europe and have to admit to themselves: We have brought it to the point where we can actually do nothing but offer the Entente: take over our entire government and take care of us! – He is even justifiably a little proud of those who say, “Better to die than to sign the treaty!” – by pointing out that one cannot imagine that 60 million Germans will die at once.

What is there to say about this? Only one thing: what has taken place between Central Europe and the West is a game between capitalism and capitalism. And as long as it is a game between capitalism and capitalism, it will lead to nothing but its end. A new beginning can only be made when work is done from below, that is, when the working population works on a truly serious social reconstruction. [...]* And because we need a beginning for domestic and, above all, foreign policy reasons, this impulse of the tripartite social organism has emerged, which alone is capable of helping a realistic production of goods to its right. At the same time, it is important to find new ways of distributing goods, which will prevent the emergence of what has so far been capital-forming and what has also caused our international conflicts. Therefore, the most important thing today is to recognize that socialization must begin with us having a base of socially minded people. These will make it possible to find the way to such a distribution of goods as I have just indicated, and to arrive at a new way of dealing with the problems associated with land and the means of production. It is not enough just to make demands. Socialization of the means of production is good. But the main thing is to find ways and means of fulfilling these demands. There is no other way than to get down to work. Today it would be quite interesting to talk about how we distribute goods in all sorts of ways. But the first thing that is necessary is that we are finally able to talk to people who are willing to undertake a different distribution of goods. We do not need words that are programs, but words that put people on their feet. Programs will never be of use to us. Today we need people who are truly aware of their power and who put into practice what the words are meant to be the germinal thoughts for.

I ask you not to take this as meaning that it would be good if we had made more progress and already knew what needed to be done. People like Naumann always know what needs to be done; but I would not worry so much if I knew what was to be done in Naumann's sense. Then I would know that these are fine thoughts to enjoy, but they do not socialize. The impulse of the threefold social organism differs from other impulses in that it does not introduce a new program into the world, but merely seeks to show how people in the world must come together, how they must find each other, so that realities and not utopias or programs arise. In this sense, it is a source of satisfaction to me that so many of our friends have already proclaimed how far things have already come. I would ask you not to slacken, to continue the steps that have been taken and to take them faster and faster. Because if we have the councils, everything else can be achieved with their help. Those who today are truly taking what has been said to heart should have understood that. They should have understood that it is essential that we first have people who really want socialization. That is the first actual socialization program. And the first step towards socialization will have been taken when the works councils in the local economic area have been elected. And then we will be able to say: Now we want to take the next step. Because for that, they must first be there for us to take the next steps. For socialization, we need the people who want socialization. And the works council will probably be seen in the future as the first step towards true socialization.

According to the chairman, it has just been announced that four works councils have been elected and that the election of six further works councils is in progress.

Chairman Mr. Lohrmann: I open today's meeting. Unfortunately, it is very poorly attended, which is probably very much due to the fact that the parties are beginning to fight our cause. This is based on an error. I have also argued with various party members. They see in the matter of threefolding a fragmentation of the working class, of the proletariat, in the struggle that will lead to the liberation of the proletariat. For this reason, the party fights the threefolding of the social organism. We can still discuss today what position we must adopt in future, especially with regard to the parties. I believe that this matter can be raised later in the discussion.

Introductory words by Rudolf Steiner

Dear Participants, I will be very brief in my introduction because I believe that the main thing should be dealt with in speech and counter-speech. The chairman has just drawn your attention to the fact that there is a strong counter-movement against what the “Federation for Threefolding” wants here. And you have also heard the reasons for this counter-movement. I would even like to say that one could express the matter quite differently, that is, what is said about the reasons for which this counter-current asserts itself. If this counter-current were really based on the assumption that a wedge could be driven into the party system, then it would be based on completely false premises. I cannot understand how anyone can maintain that there should be any intention on our part to drive a wedge into the party system. Because, you see, the situation is like this: the parties have their program, and they also have the intention of doing this or that in the near future. They are not prevented from doing this or that! The only thing is that members of any party - they can stay in their party context and go along with what the party context demands of them - are offered the opportunity to take on something positive that can become action. There can be no question of this being connected with the intention that the personalities of the “Federation for the Threefold Social Organism” themselves want to take the places that party members want to take.

You see, the situation has arisen in such a way that it has been seen that with the party program, nothing can be achieved at present with regard to the most important question, the question of socialization. You have experienced the so-called revolution of November 9. You have seen that the party men have taken the lead in the government. But they also experienced that these party men knew nothing to do with what was really at hand, that they had power over it to a high degree. They could experience a great disappointment, yes, I would like to say, I am convinced that they really experience it, if they would not at all respond to something like the striving for the tripartite social organism. You might experience the disappointment that after the second revolution other party members come to the fore who, not out of any ill will but simply because party programs are powerless, after some time produce nothing positive. They may experience disappointment again. The “Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” has set itself the task of protecting them from these disappointments, these new disappointments, by pointing out what is needed in the present time and what can actually be implemented.

Parties always have the peculiarity that they gradually depart from what originally inspired them. Parties have a strange destiny in general. Since I did not pluck the impulse for the threefold social organism out of thin air, but rather grasped it on the basis of a truly intensive experience of the social movement over decades, I have also experienced many things. For example, I experienced the rise of the so-called liberal party in Austria. This party called itself liberal, but stood on the ground of monarchism, as was natural in the 1860s and 1870s. So it was a liberal party. But when this liberal party wanted to assert itself within the existing Austrian state, this liberal party acquired a strange designation: “Your Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition”. That was an official epithet for the opposition in the Austrian monarchy.

I have given this example to show that in certain situations the parties are sometimes deprived of their actual impact. But there are even more telling examples. In North America, for example, there are two main parties, the Democratic and the Republican. These two parties got their name right a long time ago: one called itself Republican because it was Republican, the other called itself Democratic because it was Democratic. Today, the Republican Party is no longer Republican at all and the Democratic Party is anything but democratic. The only difference between the two parties is that they are fed by different consortia from different election funds. Parties come into being, have a certain lifespan, which is relatively short, then they die. But they remain, so to speak, even when they are already dead, still alive as a corpse; they do not like to die. But that does no harm. Even if they have lost their original meaning, they are still a rallying point for people, and it is still good that they are there, so that people do not stray. Therefore, if you are not a theorizing politician, as party politicians often are, and if you do not want to be an ideological or utopian politician, but want to stand on practical ground and are aware that in political life you can only achieve something with united groups of people, then you have no interest in fragmenting the parties. We would be doing the most foolish thing we could possibly do if we were out to split the parties, or even wanted to found a new party. We couldn't do anything more foolish. So, that's really not an issue at all.

So one wonders: where is this resistance actually coming from? You see, I would say it comes from people's conservative attitudes. In my many lectures, I experience it again and again that the following happens. Discussion speakers stand up, and when they speak, one has a strange experience. They have only heard what they have been accustomed to thinking for decades. Much of it is correct, because the old things are not wrong. But today new things must be added to the old things! The strange thing that one can often observe in the speakers is that they have not even heard the new with their physical ears. They have only heard what they have been accustomed to hearing for decades. Yes, this is based on a certain inner dullness of the present human mind. One must become familiar with this inner inertia of the present human mind, and one must fight it.

But what is difficult for me to understand is when a certain side says: Yes, we actually agree with what Steiner says about fighting capitalism, as well as with the threefold social organism, which must come. But we are fighting against it! We must fight against it! — Anyone with a certain common sense must find this strange. And yet this point of view exists!

We are now facing the establishment of works councils. Yes, these works councils are an extremely important thing, for the following reason. Today, works councils can be set up in such a way that they are nothing more than a decoration for a mysterious continuation of the old capitalist system. They can be set up in this way, but they will certainly become nothing more than that if they are set up in the sense of the bill, which you are of course sufficiently familiar with. They will certainly become nothing more than a mere decoration if they are appointed on the basis of another bill. The only way to save them is to establish the works councils, as I have often said here, out of the living economic life, that is, to have them elected out of the economic life itself and to join together within a self-contained economic area. Here, because we have to keep to the old national borders, it would be Württemberg. This must be a constituent assembly that creates out of itself what the others want to make law. The rights, the powers, everything that the works councils have to do, must arise from the works council itself. And we must not lose the courage to create the works council out of economic life itself. But you see, as soon as you start at one end, as soon as you really take it seriously, to take the one link of the tripartite social organism as it is to be taken in the economic cycle, then you have to stand on the ground of the tripartite social organism. Then the other two links must at least somehow participate and be set up in parallel, otherwise you will not make any progress. Today it is easy to prove, simply on the basis of the facts, that what the threefold social organism wants is needed. Because, whatever is said about that socialization experiment that was carried out in the East, the important thing is always not emphasized.

If you have followed the reports carefully, you will have heard from the ministerial side in the local parliament in recent days that Lenin has now come full circle again, namely to seek help from capitalism because he doubts that socialization as he wanted it can be carried out in the present day. Such things are indeed noted with a certain satisfaction even by socialist governments today. Let them have their satisfaction. But you see, what matters is that we must ask ourselves why this Eastern experiment has failed. It is because – it really is possible to see this, you just have to have the courage to fight your own prejudices – it is because, above all, no consideration was given within this Russian, Eastern, socialist experiment to establishing an independent socialization of intellectual life. This link was missing, and that is why it failed. And when people realize this, they will know how to do things differently. We must learn from the facts and not from the party program spectres that have been haunting our minds for decades. That is what matters, and I can tell you: either the works councils are set up in such a way that they are the first step towards what is planned on a large scale in the sense of a social organization of the human community, so that something can emerge from the works councils that amounts to real socialization, or it is not done that way, and then real socialization will not be achieved. If we wait until the continuation of the old system of government sets up works councils on the basis of a law, if we always start from the idea that those who want to take practical action are fragmenting the party, then we will get nowhere.

One question must be asked again and again. You see, when we started talking about things here in terms of the tripartite social organism, we and our friends from the parties relatively quickly gained the trust of the working class, the trust of a large part of the working class. At first, they apparently watched this with composure, because they thought, well, as long as a few people are fooling around, it is enough to say: don't worry about these utopians. But then they saw that it was not about utopia at all, but about the beginning of actually doing something practical. The utopia and ideology thing didn't quite work anymore. But then, when we tried to work for the works councils, the accusation of utopia could no longer be maintained at all. And now they are saying that fragmentation is being carried into the party. Yes, but they had to come first and say that; they had to tell the people first that fragmentation was being carried into the party. We did not introduce it. But those who say that they themselves introduced it. Where does the fragmentation come from? There is only one answer to this question: you do not have to talk about it the way you do, then there would be no fragmentation. Well, the matter of the works council is just too serious for such things not to be discussed today. And so I hope that from these points of view, one or other of you will talk a great deal more about the various things that are necessary at this unfortunately poorly attended meeting.

Actually, I am very surprised at the opposition that arises here when I take a closer look at some things. The parties, for example, they all actually need a certain going out beyond themselves, namely a going up to something positive. Yesterday I received the “Arbeiterrat” (Workers' Council), the organ of the Workers' Councils of Germany, whose editorial office is held by Ernst Däumig. In this you will find an article entitled “Geistesarbeiterrat und Volksgeist” (Intellectual Workers' Council and National Spirit) by Dr. Heuser, KPD. It discusses a number of issues. In this article, you will find the following, among other things, which I consider so important that I would like to read it to you. So, the article is by Dr. Heuser, a member of the KPD: “However, it is a condition of life in the socialist state that the intellectual element in the life of the people be given its due consideration. There is a great danger that the one-sided consideration of the materially active part of the people will stifle the spiritual conditions of life in the socialist community and transform the state of the future into a material entity in which spiritual forces have no leeway and thus no freedom. The purposeful working class rightly demands: All political power to the workers' councils – all economic power to the works councils. We demand: All spiritual power to the intellectual workers' councils!” — Please, a member of the KPD! All intellectual power to the intellectual workers' councils! “We demand, in addition to the body of workers' councils (political body) and that of the works councils (economic body), a body of intellectual councils (intellectual body), in which the intellectual element of the people can make itself heard at any time and which, to balance the enormous political and economic rights of the overwhelming manual laborers, sufficient influence over the filling of the more important positions in the community with intellectual, capable personalities, since otherwise there is no guarantee that these positions will not be filled, as has been the case so far, in a spiritless manner according to power-political or material-economic considerations. The militaristic Hohenzollern regime collapsed because it failed to understand the social demands of our time, just as the capitalist sham democracy will collapse despite its 'victories'. A socialist state that unilaterally favors the interests of manual laborers and neglects the interests of the intellectual element of the people is just as untenable: it will create a new class antagonism, new oppression, and new struggles.

Now I ask you – there is no mention here of reading my book – but I ask you: what is this other than threefolding? And now an especially important conclusion:

"However, the spiritual element of nations alone is capable of shaping the international understanding of the future and creating a league of nations that is not hypocritical. Let us assume that in the new socialist state the political workers' councils or the economic works councils have the decisive say – where would that lead? Foreign policy would then either be decided according to (political) power considerations – the cabinet wars of earlier centuries are already a sufficient warning for us – or politics would be decided by economic interests; the world war we have just experienced is a terrible example of this. If, however, politics is guided by considerations of spiritual humanity, then this alone will ensure that a permanent barrier is erected against the temptations of human lust for power and possessions. Only then will civilized man return to justice towards himself and others."

This, you see, is an article by a member of the Communist Party on the “Workers' Council,” which is edited by Ernst Däumig. So, those who see things not only through the party glasses, but see them as they are, confirm what has been said here often, namely that the threefolding of the social organism is in the air. It is strange that more people do not think of it. But here you have the whole story of the threefold social order without our movement being mentioned. In my book, of course, it is fully substantiated and developed in detail. You can already find it hinted at in the appeal “To the German People and to the Cultural World”.

Unfortunately, however, it is still the case that people today cannot rise to the great issues that are really necessary. Therefore, they will not be able to establish even the smallest institutions in the sense that they correspond to the great reckoning in which we find ourselves. Therefore, it is necessary that we really know today that a cure for economic life can only come about if we first set up an independent economic body – at least we have to start with that. That must be the works council. The other things that have to come will also grow out of the works council: the transport council and the economic council. From these three councils, it will follow that the works councils will deal more with production, the transport councils with the circulation of goods, and the economic councils with the consumer cooperative in the broadest sense. Everything else, such as forestry, agriculture, the extraction of raw materials, and above all, international economic life, can then be incorporated into this council system of economic life. It must be clearly understood that economic life does not present the difficulties which are always mentioned in order to create a bugbear. It is only necessary, when one socializes economically, to record the passive trade balance, that is, the surplus of imports over exports, on the consumption side. Then the right thing will come out by itself.

All this is contained in the system of the tripartite social organism, and when people say they do not understand it, it is only because they do not want to take the trouble to really draw the appropriate conclusions, but believe that you first have to draw up a program. Yes, reality is not a program; reality needs more than what can be said in a program. Anyone who talks about reality must assume that people think a little, because reality is very complicated. And I ask you, when it comes to the important question of works councils in a practical sense, not to really imagine the matter as simply as many do today. The future social economic order will have to start from the principle that has been proclaimed for decades, and quite correctly: Production must be for consumption, not for profit. The question is: how do we do it? This question cannot be answered in theory, but rather by you electing works councils and then these works councils coming together in a works council federation. If you proceed in this way, the question of production for consumption will be answered from within people. There is no theory about it, but the solution will be what the living people who come from the economic life have to say, each from their own needs, and what they contribute to the solution.

Things have to be tackled in such a way that you don't call it practical when you say that this or that should happen, but when you put people on their feet who should now figure out the right thing through a living interaction. On the surface, it can be said that it is easy to understand what is related to consumption, because the statistics everywhere tell us how much pepper, how much coal, how many knives and forks and the like we need. And if you have the exact statistics, you will simply have to produce as much as these statistics indicate. Yes, even if the statistics are not too old, they would still be completely useless for the present moment. And even if they are new, they are only valid for this one year, and by next year they will already be outdated. What needs to be said about consumption must be continually grasped and approached in a living way. For this you need economic councils. They must be in constant motion. Because it is not that simple. We cannot rely on literature, but we need a living council system that covers the entire economic system. But you have to have the courage to do that. We need living people in place of what capital has done in an egoistic way, so that the reorganization of economic life is done in a social way. Otherwise we will not get anywhere. This is what must be seriously considered today, especially with regard to the question of works councils. In practice, this means nothing other than that the works councils are elected and then meet in a plenary assembly of works councils. Then this works council will have to be supplemented by the transport council and the economic council. In this way we will move forward.

How the fact that a practical way is now being indicated to lead to the fragmentation of the parties and to a confusion of minds, that is something that another person can see more clearly than I can. I cannot see it. The parties should not be harmed by this, certainly not if they want to form a united phalanx. They may do it. That will be much better than if the people go their separate ways. We certainly have no interest in people going their separate ways. But we do have an interest – especially when we see that nothing positive can be done through mere programs – in the positive being carried into the working class. Our aim was never to found a new party, but the intention underlying the founding of the “Bund für Dreigliederung” was to help the proletariat achieve a truly social position. And this can only be realized when class rule ceases. But then the question is not what small or large numbers of members adhere to a party program, but rather to ask oneself: What has to happen? And because it is increasingly recognized that the proletariat will never achieve its goal with the old party programs, that is why the impetus for the threefold order is there.

I wanted to say this by way of introduction. Now I hope that we will have a lively discussion about the works council question and other related issues. If the works council election is to be the first step towards real socialization, then it can only be good to keep looking at socialization from a different, higher point of view.

Discussion

Chairman Lohrmann: It is very important for us in the present time and under the present conditions that, as Dr. Steiner has read, a communist leader writes that threefolding must be undertaken. When we talk to our comrades, we are dismissed with short catchwords. This is the stumbling block in our work for the election of works councils! We have convinced comrades as leaders in the factories, but they are influenced by the party against our cause, so that they are not even interested. They dismiss the matter without looking into it. Our main work will be to overcome this resistance. The parties fear that the threefold order will create a rift in the working class that will weaken the proletariat in the struggle against capitalism.

But I have also spoken to many comrades who think our cause is good. However, people do not want to appear in public so as not to compromise themselves with regard to the party leaders and comrades. This is the great cancer in our movement. Everyone who has grasped the cause should freely and openly profess it.

At Bosch, we have set up a works council, but only as a provisional measure. This is another problem, because if we now have a provisional works council, the people are not appointed by the workforce, and so not all of the workforce is interested in the matter. Our main task is to interest the whole proletariat in the matter, in order to show the present government, which supports capitalism, seriously, what we want.

Mr. Huth: When I look at the empty hall, I have to say to myself that those who have to bear responsibility as members of the working committee should also have the courage to stand up for what they have recognized as right. And those who recognize the threefold order as right, as their strong applause always showed, also support it. It is said that the threefold order means fragmentation of the working class. Let us take a look at the working class. It is so torn between different parties that they fight each other fiercely that it is almost impossible to fragment it even further.

We need the unification of the proletariat, but not just under any slogan, such as “All power to the councils,” as it is given by the communists, but no one knows what they actually want to say. It is just a slogan, and we need action. When we utter such slogans as “The dictatorship of the proletariat”, it is necessary that we can imagine something under this slogan.

What exactly is the “dictatorship of the proletariat”? Should it come from above or from below? If we wait for the government to create a works council law that meets our needs, then we probably won't see it, and if we want to wait for some proletarian party to give us the guidelines we need to achieve unity of the proletariat, then I am convinced that we will never achieve unity, just as we will never achieve true socialization. Today everyone clings to the words of Karl Marx: “The emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself.” And when they do start, people say: Leave it alone, you don't understand it, until we tell you what to do. The fact that every party wants something different is what causes the fragmentation. We need a revolutionary act in which every worker, regardless of which proletarian party they belong to, can participate. And one such act is the creation of workers' councils on a truly revolutionary basis, as Dr. Steiner showed us. What Dr. Steiner read as the words of a communist are actually exactly the same as what Dr. Steiner tells us, namely threefolding.

Let us read the brochure in which comrade Däumig's speech at the USP party conference is printed, and let us apply it to practice. He doesn't say “threefolding,” but what he says means threefolding. For example, when he explains that a strict distinction must be made between the political and economic tasks to be solved, and that a special council system must exist for both branches. He only mentioned this briefly because he was not fully aware of it. It will be necessary for the members of the workers' committee who agreed with what Dr. Steiner said not to be deterred by the appearance of the parties, who now see themselves excluded from the truly revolutionary work, and not to be deterred by the clamor that the world, but to consistently continue to implement what they have found to be right, namely to hold elections for works councils in all companies and to have these works councils meet to form a works council that will create the laws itself, which we need.

We have elected the works council in our company, and I would now like to ask all the works councils that have already been elected to register with both the “Federation for Threefolding” and the Action Committee of the United Proletariat. This Action Committee has issued a flyer for the election of the works councils because this Action Committee also wants the election of the works councils to be carried out on the basis of how it has been characterized. It is therefore necessary for the works councils to come forward so that we can get down to the real practical work. It was asked earlier whether the action committee still exists. Yes, it still exists, although the party has called on its members to resign from the action committee. That is an assumption on the part of the party. The members of the action committee have been elected from within the factories, against the parties and against the leaders of the parties. Only if we can go beyond the parties can we achieve a healthy party life. The parties have driven us apart; they cannot bring us together again. They have fought each other so fiercely that, as they themselves say, they refuse to sit down at the same table. But when I, as a member of the USP, talk to a member of the KPD today, we are in complete agreement. This unity can only be embodied in an organization that is supported by the trust of all workers. We must have the courage to tell the leaders what is necessary and right. If they reject the threefold order without having given the idea any thought at all, then it is, yes, I can't find a suitable expression, almost a meanness to simply expect the worker who has familiarized himself with the train of thought of the threefold order to go away and to put him on trial before an inquisition because he considers something to be good and true based on his conviction. If the labor leaders act courageously, we will also be able to convince the workers who are organized in the parties that the threefold order must come. They themselves, the members and leaders of these parties, unconsciously provide us with the weapons to beat them themselves. Read the article in “Spartakist” about the threefold order. You can see that they completely agree with the threefold order but still fight it. Why? If we show the article from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” to our leaders, I am convinced that the workers who are organized in these parties will also be convinced that the threefold social order must come and that it is a revolutionary act when we work for it and stand up for it. It is only the conservative thinking of all these leaders who want to be revolutionary that prevents them from really understanding the threefold order.

So I would like to ask that in the companies where there is some kind of beginning, where a small start has been made towards the works council election, the committee members should not be misled, but should consistently continue and always take a stand again at every works meeting on the works council election. We must achieve the unification of the proletariat at all costs, and nothing is more important. We will never achieve unity through the parties. The working class will become more and more fragmented, and the socialization of the entire economic life, including intellectual life and political life, would never be realized. In this sense, I would like to ask those present to no longer raise the question: What power do we have? – This is a completely secondary question. We should only come forward and go to the heart of the matter, and we should have the courage to defend the threefold social organism to the parties. Only if we speak with courage and self-respect to those who are too comfortable to embrace a new opinion will we make progress.

Mr. Sander: I have heard all of Dr. Steiner's lectures and have never seen the matter through party glasses, but rather considered it an ideal matter. Now the parties are coming and saying that the path of threefolding is a new party. However, I do not yet consider the matter feasible because we do not yet have humanity for it. We only have party people who quarrel with each other and who have not yet entered into a spiritual life at all. Since the worker has no spiritual life at all, he cannot live with the matter. Only material interest plays a role for the proletariat. In this respect, the proletarian is no different from the capitalist. He also never gets enough. Only through threefolding can things improve; only through it can a recovery of the whole of life come about, for the whole of social life is suffering from the confusion of the three spheres. But the proletarians have often been disappointed and are therefore mistrustful. They are always afraid: Stop, that man and that man - there is something else behind it. They think that Dr. Steiner could also be in the thrall of capitalism. They cannot explain it differently, they just think: the man has been paid! — That, of course, is out of the question. I have also noticed in meetings and lectures that many people clapped so enthusiastically that others said: Why are they clapping like that? — People become so mistrustful as a result of their great disappointment.

In the last Sieglehaus lecture, a USP agitator said that people who support threefolding should simply leave the party. — This is an assumption on the part of the party that must be denounced. The matter of threefolding has nothing to do with the party. The parties themselves fragment the masses. The Action Committee of United Proletarians was a party too, and that was a big mistake. If it had not been a party, then unity would have been much more easily achieved.

The question of works councils is a very serious one. Whether the system of councils adopted by the National Assembly will be developed is another question. But if we set up the works councils now, we will encounter difficulties with the government, which is of the opinion that it is up to us to accept the laws that we present to you. And for the time being, we have to abide by that. Works councils can only be set up when the parties or trade unions order it. I would also say that works councils should have been introduced long ago, and we must thank Dr. Steiner for telling us what a works council looks like. No one has yet stood up and said what a works council is and what its duties and tasks are. We could only learn this from Dr. Steiner. I think the others either conceal it or don't know about it. Even if it cannot yet be put into practice, it is still a tremendous step forward for our time that we have finally received guidelines, that at long last a movement is taking place in the innermost heart through Dr. Steiner. He has gained a deep influence over inner human feeling and thinking. Anyone who has been to the lectures will have to admit to themselves, even if they do not confess it publicly, that the man is right after all. Mr. Sommer from Munich-Pasing: I came here to find out how conditions in Bavaria could be shaped in the future. Bavaria has a very special interest in emerging from the revolution with a profit. The government that now exists in Bavaria has not yet brought a solution that the Bavarian people and also the other German states need. To make it easier to understand what I want to say, I would like to point out that I am a senior civil servant. In my job, one of the things I have to do is procure documents for the very large projects that are now being discussed everywhere, including outside Bavaria, and that are to be carried out in Bavaria. These projects are concerned with major water connections between the Rhine and the Danube. Bavaria is, relatively speaking, extremely favored in Germany. According to recent studies, if everything were done in the best possible technical way – which of course will never happen, it is only the highest limit, the theoretical one, that could be achieved with technical means – one could obtain about six million horsepower from water power. Walchensee project, Middle Isar project and so on. (Interjection: To the point!) I am interested in hearing and being educated in lectures by Dr. Steiner when such great things are being prepared, how this should be done in the future. Is it more expedient to maintain the course that the relevant government in Bavaria has taken so far, or is it more correct and better for the welfare of the people to take the course proposed by Dr. Steiner? On the basis of what I have learned here, I have come to the conclusion that it can only be in the interest of the people's welfare if work is carried out on the basis of Dr. Steiner's proposals. Dr. Steiner's ideas must be disseminated in all circles. I believe that unfortunately relatively very few of the middle and higher officials who have now been drawn into the tow of the existing government and who, in very many cases, at least as advisers, are consulted when drafting laws, are informed about the matter. One reason why things are progressing more slowly than one would like, knowing the seriousness of the matter, is that people are afflicted with fear. I am speaking here in Stuttgart today. It is questionable whether I would be allowed to say what I am saying here in my home country without risking this or that. But in the here and now, we must rise above fear of man and only look at what is best for the general public.

Mr. Pfetzer: We must not believe that we can persuade capitalism to help the working class. This can only be done through violence, through struggle. We can elect the works councils, but what function and what role do the works councils have vis-à-vis the current government, which is completely in control? The government is working closely with capitalist society! The fragmentation of the parties really exists, but I am clear that the workers are united in their plight. But we all have selfishness on our minds, and that is also present in the party leaders. I am convinced that the parties think of nothing but: How can I get a ministerial seat or a seat in parliament? We should elect representatives who can be removed if we have reason to believe that they are harming the general public. Then I am convinced that we will not have parties in charge.

Mr. Lange: There is far too much mystery in the threefold order, in Dr. Steiner's work, and people are adding this and that that he did not say at all. We should simply try to grasp the new for once! One of the speakers said that if you want to buy a place, you have to have money. But Dr. Steiner says that money must be introduced into the economic cycle, and the soil is a means of production; that is what matters. In the new order, everyone who has the desire and love for it must be able to find their place. The gentleman from Bavaria was right to say that we cannot exploit the economic and technical possibilities as much as we could. Why not? Just because of the tiresome money and because money has such a position today as it has? As the previous speaker said, making your body available is not that important. The practical thing is not to let yourself be shot dead. Then you are no longer there and cannot work anymore. You have to realize: I have to be there, I have to be the carrier of the right ideas, I have to really work and not think, that I have to let myself be shot dead. That the parties, like the dear church, are falling out over it: How is the matter likely to be accurate to a hundredth of a millimeter? - and can't come to the right one, you can see that. Schiller said: I don't belong to any church - out of religiosity. - So today you can say: I don't belong to any party. But many then swing back and forth between the parties.

The issue today is to create works councils, and so the question is: What will the government say? — We don't care what the government says, it doesn't matter at all. The main thing is that we set up works councils. People will then make the laws. We first need to have people who can represent the economy. Now they are still scattered. There is no one who would really be the champion of practical fulfillment. People always say: That is theoretical, you can't understand it. — I recently spoke to commercial employees. I said: Now we want to have pushed through our salary and wage demands [...] Yesterday people were talking about it, I wasn't there, but they understood without further ado: We must have workers' councils, we must have people who can really determine what is to become of economic life. It is essential that these people, who are immersed in the economy, do what is necessary. Then people will no longer ask, “What will the government say?” or “What will happen to us?” Nothing will happen to us, but we must simply recognize how simple the matter is and not read into it anything that is not there.

Dr. Unger: The subject of today's deliberations is, first and foremost, the question of works councils, and second, how we can respond to the attacks that have been made against the goals of the “Bund für Dreigliederung”. In this context, it is surely our duty to refer to something that I said publicly last Tuesday at the Siegle House regarding the strong resistance from industry against the election of works councils. Now, please note that these industrialists have more or less decided to reject the works councils as a matter of course. But secondly, those industrialists who are active in the “Federation for Threefolding”, for example, or those who want to join forces with the other productive forces to form works councils, are also rejected. A heresy trial is held by the industrialists over such members of the “Federation for Threefold Order”. So on the one hand we see parties that declare that those who want to propagate the threefold order of the social organism must now be asked whether they can remain in the party or not. On the other hand, we see industrialists doing exactly the same. They see the use of force from both the right and the left against something that can take hold of the mind, the heart, the head, the whole human being as a way out of chaos. Against this, the law asserts itself, which violently seeks to suppress the emergence of an idea. [Some critical remarks about the attitude of the parties and leading business circles follow. The remarks conclude with the words:] I would like to relate something that happened last week. We had a meeting at which a communist said: I followed Dr. Steiner's appearance with great interest. But then I had to tell myself that such theories do not mean very much in the end. Now, however, I see more and more clearly that this 'Federation for Threefolding' has not remained at the level of theory, but is practically taking up an issue that is in fact a fundamental question of the present day, namely the question of works councils. Since I realized this, I am in complete agreement. I have to admit that there is indeed a determination here to move forward with practical work. Now that was a confession we can use.

Another participant in the discussion speaks up: As a worker, I naturally have the greatest interest in the question of works councils being implemented in practice. The Reich bill for the establishment of works councils still represents nothing more than silhouettes. [...] The parties' aversion to the threefold order is primarily because they feel that the working class is being drawn away from the class struggle. But we are still standing on this ground of the class struggle and we will also know how to represent our interests there. For the time being, we just have to achieve practical results, and that is to elect works councils. The question of works councils is also the question of the class struggle. It is even the most practical question, and we must do everything we can to create works councils as quickly as possible. If the bill passes, then the old capitalism will remain. We must learn our lessons from the overall opposition and the statements from the right and the left. How can we do that? There is only one answer: we elect our works councils despite all the hostility. We are promoting the idea of works councils because it is the only true way out of the chaos that we cannot escape from without practical work.

Mr. Navrocki from Berlin-Friedrichshagen: Dear Comrades! If I may be so bold as to make a few comments, I would like to start by saying that before I came here, the problem under discussion was new to me. But as a proletarian who thinks and feels with the masses, it was clear to me that this problem, if it is to be truly addressed, cannot be treated as a party program, but, as Dr. Steiner said, must be addressed from life itself. [After some critical remarks about the way the parties have proceeded so far, Mr. Navrocki concludes his remarks with the words:] Several speakers have said: We must move on to action. But this action can only be to go beyond the government program and prove that it is possible to carry out our program. The most necessary and important thing, however, is that all those who devote themselves wholeheartedly to this program because they are convinced that only by realizing this program can something meaningful be created also commit themselves completely to it. These can only be people who think and feel proletarian. Only someone who is in touch with the masses and has perhaps gone through the proletarian school of misery himself will also care about leading the proletariat out of misery. He will have to realize that the only direction in which work can be done is to lead all people to lofty human thoughts. It is at this level that thoughts also arise, and we are only those who have to go out to realize this program.

Mr. Jansen: I want to be the first to report on the state of the elections for the introduction of works councils. If a workers' group in our company had not taken a separate position, we could tell you that the election of the works councils took place today. Last Monday, we negotiated with our management about the introduction of workers' councils. We presented the various points of view and said: The purpose of introducing workers' councils is to replace private capitalism. We want to replace private capitalism, and that is why we want to elect workers' councils. At first, the director made a strange face, but he is a jovial and reasonable man and came to terms with the situation. He said: Well, whether we hold the election of the works councils a little earlier than is legally required is of no concern to me. By all means call the election. — This as a message. The one group of us who have not yet been able to bring themselves to comment on it will have to answer for it on Monday, so that the election will take place on Wednesday either way.

From discussions with colleagues and others, it can be seen that people feel that the introduction of works councils is a path that leads into the dark. There are a lot of people who are not used to thinking and acting independently. They do not want or desire to do or refrain from doing something in any way. They want to be presented with the consequences of their actions down to the last detail from the outset. But because the works councils are required to have the obligation and responsibility, after they have been elected, to bring the life of the company and the economy into the channels that should be decisive for the welfare of the proletariat and the entire nation, they shrink back. This is too much to expect. And truly, one can understand this. For years and years there has been organization, there has been leading. We must not overlook this. For decades, the majority of our work colleagues have not been able to bring themselves to think independently or to come to an independent act. They need support and guidance in everything. The resistance and dislike on the part of some of the workers can be traced back to this. A certain lack of interest prevails, combined with a great deal of laziness. With Dr. Steiner, one could also speak of mental laziness. We must fight against this.

The question of wages is still too much in the foreground for colleagues. When it comes to works councils, the first question is: will we get more wages? If we could say, two marks more a day, then we would have nothing but friends. But because we say: colleagues, look ahead for once! If you achieve today through struggle that you get one mark more, tomorrow you have to spend one mark fifty more. It's an eternal screw. One drives the other. Your life situation is getting worse and worse. Suddenly you have reached the point where you can no longer exist.

Mr. Lorenz: All shop stewards and committee members should consider it their first duty to put their will into action as quickly as possible, especially by promoting the idea in those companies where nothing is yet known about it. — A works council has been set up in our company a month ago. Of course, as long as the works councils are only introduced in individual companies, it is futile. We need to gather the works councils here as quickly as possible so that a general assembly can be held.

Mr. Baumann: The parties, especially their leaders, repeatedly make the accusation that Dr. Steiner is not a Marxist. He does not stand on the ground of Marxism. So we cannot deal with him. — This remark seems to me to be made by people who take the view that they are venerating the bones of a saint. It must be said that a great many party members are bone or fetish worshippers because they only want to adhere to the old ways. Marx says in his manifesto: Proletarians of all countries, unite! If Marx could speak today, he would use glowing words to point out that parties should not be fragmented and pushed to the fore, but used as a rallying point so that something can be achieved through them. He would say: If you cannot even agree in Germany, let alone in the whole world, then you are not worthy of anything but the contempt of capitalism. We should not place ourselves in the worship of bones, but in the living effect of thought, in the thoughts that Dr. Steiner has shown us. Marx would say: If someone comes after me who brings something new and his name is not Marx but Steiner, then hold fast to the living spirit and not to the old bones.

Mr. Conradt: Much has been said against the threefold social order, but especially that the idea could not be translated into reality. Since the issue of the workers' councils has been raised and factual objections cannot be raised, more convenient means of fighting have been resorted to, in that untruths have been circulated in the parties. One of these untruths was that those who advocate the idea of threefolding receive money for doing so. The one who said this said that for reasons of purity, the party must expel such people. What should be done with those in the party who have to resort to defamation for reasons of purity? When the speaker in question rebuffed Mr. Gönnewein and said that no one would seek to discredit the other if they had not done so themselves, the speaker used a word that was appropriate in this case: he shouted “meanness!” But the word falls back on him, because he has approached us with such an accusation. So the resistance we experience increases. At first it is unobjective objections, then meanness. We will see what will follow. We absolutely must discuss the question of threefolding with those who have so far avoided discussion. Although the leader of the USP has said that threefolding should not be discussed at every meeting, I still think that we can get things moving in party meetings. That is the right way to justify ourselves, not before the small circle of initiates, but before the general public.

[The following resolution is read and unanimously adopted:]

Resolution

The assembly of many workers' and employees' committees in Greater Stuttgart, which took place on June 14, sees the threefold social order as the right practical way to heal our entire national life, despite all the hostility from employers' associations, trade unions and party leaders.

The assembly recognizes the legally prescribed works councils merely as a shadowy form of the same, which will never be able to gain influence over socialization, and therefore has no interest in the election and establishment of such shadow works councils.

Rudolf Steiner: Today's discussion has only expressed approval. Therefore, I will be able to be quite brief in my closing remarks and only make a few comments.

You see, it is good, when faced with such facts, as they have been discussed many times today and which have a hindering effect on what one wants to do in the sense of the progressive socialization of the human community, when faced with such facts, to really look at the whole attitude, at, I would say, the whole state of mind from which something like this arises. At such a serious moment as the present, we should have no illusions or allow ourselves to be deceived. A few days ago you will have read a strange article. I believe it was in the “Sozialdemokrat”. It talks about “pushing and pulling behind the scenes”. The underlying issue is that a so-called “Daimler-Werk-Zeitung” has been founded. This “Daimler-Werk-Zeitung” is supposed to state that the management has no inclination or trust in conducting oral negotiations with the workforce. That is why they are trying to set up a company newspaper. If you read what one or the other writes, it might be easier to reach an understanding. Well, I read this in the Sozialdemokrat. It reminds me that it does happen that people who live together in a family cannot communicate properly, and then, even though they live in the same apartment, they write letters to each other. But apart from that, it is pointed out that a great deal of work has been done behind the scenes, probably between me – this is clearly stated – and between Mr. Muff, who is said to be a major, and between Director Dr. Riebensam.

But you see, I heard about this Daimler factory newspaper for the first time through the article in the “Sozialdemokrat”. I knew nothing about Mr. Muff, with whom I am supposed to have conferred, until then. I don't even know him. Dr. Riebensam was at various public meetings, and I occasionally spoke to him quite publicly after these meetings. Beyond that, however, I never had a meeting with him. We merely met each other at a few gatherings, which were not exactly the place to conspire against the Stuttgart working class or against the Daimler workers in particular. There were workers from the Daimler factory standing around everywhere, because most of the gatherings were attended by the Daimler workers themselves. You see, these things arise from strange ideological backgrounds, and you have to be very attentive to see the matter in the right light.

Then I would like to point out how strangely this or that point is thought of. I once attended a meeting where socialization was discussed in such a way that ultimately nothing could come of it. I cannot go into the matter itself now. Well, there was also a trade union leader who said: We cannot agree with this matter of threefold social order. I thought that the man would now explain to me his reasons for opposing the threefold social order. But I miscalculated. He knew nothing about it. But he did say, “Yes, you know, you published a flyer with the words ‘Lord’ and ‘Sir’ underneath it, and when you are in such company, we want nothing to do with you.” You see, there is the condemnation, which may have taken on great dimensions now. It comes from very strange ideological backgrounds. I think it would be quite good, precisely in order to muster the impetus to do the things that are important in the first instance, if one were to face such things, which actually arise from quite murky backgrounds – I could also say are washed up – if one were to face such things quite disillusioned. For we are living in such serious times today and need to approach the things we do in such a serious way that we must resolve to believe that progress will only come to those who work with pure means and from a pure mind.

My esteemed audience, unfortunately, a great deal of work has been done all over the world in recent decades with impure means and an impure mind, and the world has ultimately come to the great murder through this way of working with impure minds and impure means. If we really want to get out of what we have gotten into, then we need moral strength and courage. That is what I want to say quite openly, especially because it would give me particular pleasure if those people who have so often worked with unclean means and, by virtue of their social position, veiled this would be to point out to them that those whom they have oppressed and in whom the consciousness of their humanity has now awakened, work only with pure means and want to show them how they should have done it. It would give me great pleasure if it could be said of the German proletariat, in particular, that it can be a model for the world in terms of the choice of means. I believe that a great deal will depend on such things in the near future. If you look at the international situation – you only have to look a little beyond the borders – it is immediately apparent that people around the world are waiting for a different tone to be adopted in Germany than was the case before 1914 and after 1914. But not only those in Germany who are still capable of thinking, but also those in the world, that is, outside of Germany, do not believe in anything positive coming from Germany as long as the continuers of the old ways are on top. These things are very important. And that is why courage must not be lacking, so that, despite the present government and despite all party leadership, those whose names have not yet been mentioned will stand up. That they will stand up, lift themselves out of the broad masses of humanity and say: We are here! — Therefore create a works council in a sensible way, because I believe that the works council can be the first step for new people to come to the surface, who judge from completely different backgrounds than those who are now showing the peculiar spectacle of governing the world.

It is a national and an international matter that is at stake. Look at such a question as that of the works councils from as high a point of view as possible. Try to create something with it that can exist from a high point of view for the first time, then you will have created something great – even if it is only a beginning, but it will be a beginning to something great. We must not be fainthearted and say: We don't have the people, the proletarians are not yet ready in their education, we have to wait. — We can't wait any longer, we have to act, and we have to have the courage to set up the works council so that it is there. Then the people who have not yet been able to emerge will come to the fore from among them. That is precisely the important thing, that we put people in the right places, where they belong. Because those who have come to the fore so far have shown quite clearly that they have had their day. We need a new spirit, a new system of human activity. We must be quite clear about this. We must write this very thoroughly into our souls. If we take the matter bravely in hand, then we shall make progress. Therefore, I would like to say again and again: Let us take the risk, let us set up the works councils! I have no doubt that there will be those in this works council who have something sensible to say about the progress of human development. Because if one wanted to doubt that, then one would have to despair of humanity altogether, and I do not want that.